How are we to respond to the times in which we find ourselves? Should we retreat, understanding that they are beyond our control? Or should we, knowing they are beyond our control, respond Stoically — with courage and calm, understanding, in the words of Rev. Sydney Smith, that “it is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing, because you could only do a little.”
As I pondered this over the Christmas break and into January — the so-called “wellness month” — I got very sick and lost my voice, an apt metaphor for losing the inner voice that has always been my North Star.
In the end, I concluded that reticence — even when you cannot physically “speak” — is a kind of cowardice, and that it is incumbent upon us all to speak out.
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Read MoreIn the Another-Country-Heard-From Department, Sweden was upset by President Donald J. Trump’s remarks at a campaign rally that implied the country had suffered an attack recently related to a refugee/immigration problem. (Gee, Australia, Mexico, Sweden – three countries down and only 193 left to go.)
"We've got to keep our country safe," he said. "You look at what's happening in Germany. You look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden.”
Despite the president’s problems with tenses, he was actually referring to a Fox News report Feb. 17 on an Ami Horowitz documentary that links refugees in Sweden to an increase in violent crimes – a correlation that has been debunked. ...
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Read MorePresident Donald J. Trump campaigned on the notion of a new deal, as it were, for the American worker.
So why is the American worker under siege three weeks into his presidency?
He has threatened to impose a 20-percent tariff on Mexican imports, which would no doubt ensure tariffs on American exports to Mexico like corn and soy.
He has instigated a ban on seven Muslim countries – a ban whose stay the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just upheld – which would threaten American universities and a tech industry that relies on the best and the brightest worldwide.
And he has shamed a major retailer, Nordstrom, for dropping daughter Ivanka’s line – Neiman Marcus has dropped her jewelry – thereby giving pause to those who would do business with and in America. ...
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Read More“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” Robert Frost writes in “Mending Wall” – one of two Frost poems, the other being “The Tuft of Flowers,” that addresses the nature of human relationships. “That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun; and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”
The poem ends with the neighbor telling the poet famously, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Well, they certainly make resentful ones. This has been a week of walls, literal and metaphoric, courtesy of President Donald J. Trump. There is the actual, proposed wall between Mexico and the United States whose cost would be covered by a tariff on Mexican imports like avocados. (Oh, no, whither Cinco de Mayo?) To say that Mexico is not taking this well is the understatement of 10 lifetimes. El Presidente Enrique Peña Nieto – not exactly the most popular man south of the border – nonetheless got a boost at home after he cancelled his meeting with Trump, though the two have since spoken by phone. ...
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