by admin | Mar 17, 2019 | Activism, Blogging, Identity, National security, Personal history, Public safety, Racism, Religion, Writing
New Zealand is a nation that counts its annual totals of gun homicides in single digits, as a friend of mine who just returned from a visit Down Under accurately notes. It is, by comparison to most of the world, an incredibly peaceful, peace-loving country. Yet two...
by admin | Jul 31, 2018 | Activism, Books, Climate, Disaster, Floodplain management, Geography, History, Housing, Journalism, Natural Hazards, Racism, Water, Weather, Writing
It has always amazed me how much time and energy has been wasted, particularly in the U.S., on the denial of climate change in the face of so much scientific evidence. Sea level rise is a directly measurable phenomenon. So are changes in precipitation patterns over...
by admin | Jun 17, 2018 | Activism, Christianity, Civil rights, History, Immigration, Public policy, Racism, Religion
I am angry on Father’s Day. I am deeply disturbed by what I am seeing. I am a Christian who is insulted by the use of the Bible to justify the separation of children from parents who brought them to the U.S. border in search of safety and political asylum. First, it...
by admin | May 29, 2018 | Books, Christianity, Civil rights, Government, History, Racism, Religion
On May 10, my wife and I attended a matinee performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. Coming a month after the Easter evening (April 1) NBC broadcast of this ground-breaking rock opera by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, it allowed some...
by admin | May 2, 2018 | Activism, Civil rights, Education, New Orleans, Public health, Public policy, Racism
While I was in New Orleans April 19-24 for the American Planning Association’s 2018 National Planning Conference, my wife, Jean, was also there. A retired Chicago Public Schools teacher and retiree delegate for the Chicago Teachers Union, she has remained active on...
by admin | Jan 13, 2018 | Activism, Books, Chicago, Civil rights, Government, History, Immigration, Literature, National security, Racism
Greetings from the U.S. city founded by a Haitian immigrant. Sometime in the 1780s, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, reportedly born of a French father and an African slave mother, who had gained some education in France and made his way from New Orleans to the Midwest,...
