As we approach the one-year anniversary of the COVID lockdown, I've been recalling moments and events from last February and early March, a time knew about COVID but didn't yet know just how much it was going to upend my life, the lives of everyone I know, and the lives of everyone else. Tonight, I've been …
Topic: Contemporary Issues
Discussing the pandemic, 2020 politics, and other recent happenings
The third wave of the great 1918-1919 influenza pandemic peaked early in March of 1919. Although the third wave wasn't as deadly as the apocalyptic second wave in mid 1918, it was much deadlier than the first wave, and hit particularly hard in several major cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Memphis, Nashville, San Francisco …
"In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost," is one of many lines that Dante Alighieri wrote in the 14th century that seem totally appropriate for March 2021. It's appropriate for me today, because I spent the day on Zoom doing exactly …
What, exactly, are we remembering when we "Remember the Alamo." I used to know the answer to that seemingly simple question. We remembered a heroic stand by a vastly outnumbered group of men, all of them white, who fought for freedom against Mexican oppressors. The men who died in that fight were a "Hall of Fame" …
Last fall, after Judge Am Amy Coney Barrett promised to "apply the law as it is written" and leave policy decisions to the other branches of government, Stephen Budiansky wrote a letter that was published in the New York Times. "If that's all judges need to do, we'd have no need for judges." Budiansky, author of …
"Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you," may be the one of the most famous lines in American history. These are the words, of course, that Alexander Graham Bell supposedly said on the first time he successfully used his newly invented telephone on March 10, 1876. Thinking about the call and Bell - who is …
The first stamp to picture Native Americans was issued in 1893, almost 69 years after then Secretary of War John Calhoun created the Bureau of Indian Affairs on March 11, 1824. Initially part of the War Department, BIA has been part of the Interior Department since 1849. So there's a kind of notable irony in …
If the #stampoftheday posts were like the Miller Analogies Test, I might have started today's post by asking "George Washington Carver is to peanuts as Horace Mann is to what?" The answer would have been something like "education" though "schools" also would have been acceptable. That's because Horace Mann, who is pictured on today's #stampoftheday, was—and still …
Is it enough for leaders to be competent, honest, and principled? Or is something more needed, even if that something comes at the expense of competence, honesty, and principles? That's a central question for people like me who are interested in both "what" gets done and "how" it gets done. Usually, this question is framed as …