Birthright Citizenship: It’s Personal
My grandparents were immigrants. My parents were both born in this country and thereby became “birthright citizens,” a right affirmed by the 14th amendment to the Constitution enacted in 1868…
Read MoreRecalling another inauguration and a hostage homecoming
It was another time of transition. A one-term president, accepting his electoral defeat, was on his way out. The president-elect in the then normal course of events became the new…
Read MoreAnd then there were none
The formerly local Washington Post… Say it ain’t so! But, sadly, the Washington Post‘s wonderful Petula Dvorak has just published her final Metro column. In it she recounts several of…
Read MoreNostalgic for “legacy” media?
“I guess I’ll get the papers and go home.” This 1946 hit, recorded by the Mills Brothers and others, hits home. It strikes a melancholy note as print newspapers shrink…
Read MoreIndifferenza
INDIFFERENZA The word is etched in large letters on stone at Milan’s Shoah Memorial, a stark reminder of a time from December 1943 to January 1945 when 774 Italian Jews…
Read More“It’s just a phase”
“It’s just a phase.” That was what my German-born Jewish great grandmother Henrietta Giballe Previn is said to have remarked on the rise of Adolph Hitler to power in the…
Read MoreRighting a Wrong in Harpers Ferry
In recent long-delayed acknowledgement of our own dark past, many Confederate monuments have been taken down throughout the South and in border states. Though there are some resisters (“fine people…
Read MoreHappy 100th Birthday, President Carter!
Peanut farmer James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr., our 39th commander in chief often mocked as president but revered as ex-president, entered hospice in February 2023 and I began writing this…
Read More“Ain’t No Back to a Merry Go-Round”
“Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round,” from a poem by Langston Hughes, is a new documentary that tells the all-but-forgotten story of the fight 65 years ago to desegregate Glen…
Read MoreThe shrinking local news landscape… and much more!
For many of my former Washington Post colleagues and, apparently, for many DC-area readers, the reductions in local coverage and locally-based correspondents have been more than disheartening. The newspaper we…
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