The Kindness of Strangers In the January 2025 issue of The Christian Century, I found a brief article by Samuel Wells (an Anglican priest who serves as head pastor of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London) with the interesting title, “Microdrama in Trafalgar Square.” (See lead photo.) Apparently Wells is just getting ready to walk across the…

Alexei Navalny Notes From Prison   In the October 21, 2024 issue of The New Yorker, Alexei Navalny is given credit for writing an article titled “Prison Diaries.” Presumably these were excerpts gathered by his wife, Yulia, and others who received his postings smuggled out of maximum-security prisons over the years. After being poisoned by…

Writing Your Own Obituary The September 29, 2024 Opinion section of The New York Times featured a think piece by Kelly McMasters titled, “Why I Write My Obituary Every Year.” (See lead photo.) Finding that title eye-catching and provocative, I read further. I learned that McMasters had been writing her obituary every year since she…

Chasing Hope On recent weekday afternoons I’ve been reading — during my “unstructured time,” as my youngest son Kevin puts it — a memoir by New York Times Editorialist and Reporter Nicholas Kristof titled Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life (Random House, 2024). Kristof quotes Desmond Tutu on his opening page: “Hope is being able to…

“Reach Out of the Darkness” — As Timely Now as it was Then When David and I take walks or just relax on the front porch, we listen to Pandora on my phone. We almost always listen to the Roy Orbison or Gordon Lightfoot channels. Recently we heard the song “Reach Out of the Darkness”…

How Do You Slow Down When It Goes Against the Grain? If you are a regular reader of my blogs, you might remember my mentioning that my oldest son, Brian, chided me a bit about working too hard a couple of years ago, and that I should “slow down and smell the roses” as they…

Loneliness, Part II: Epidemic or Not? Recent Research Findings If you are a follower of my blogs, you may remember one I posted titled “Epidemic of Loneliness” (August 3, 2023) where I recounted that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, M.D., had cited loneliness as a major problem. In fact, he called it “one of our generation’s…

Getting Older Together: Aging in America Well that’s the topic of this blog. Getting older or, put more succinctly, aging. Seven months ago, The New York Times devoted its entire Sunday editorial section to the subject. Titled “An Aging America Needs an Honest Conversation about Growing Old” (see lead photo), it describes our current situation…

Horror in Alabama: New Method to Execute a Prisoner The account last month of the execution of Kenneth Smith in an Alabama prison by the use of nitrogen hyposia brought back a wave of memories for me. So let me say this up front right now: If you are a strong supporter of the death…

Two Stories in the Midst of Conflict: Both are True The lead editorial in The Christian Century’s December 2023 issue is titled, “Bearing witness to multiple stories: Israelis and Palestinians alike are traumatized people who love the land and deserve to live there in peace.” (See lead photo.) The title caught my eye because I…