My first house, a 1927 bungalow oozing charm, cost $43,000 in 1990. The mortgage interest rate was 9.5% and I had very little money to put down, but I as a first-time home buyer, I could finance the closing costs through an FHA loan. I sold that house seven year later for $71,000, and the…
Category: Social Issues
Rooted and Rising
In 2007, Paul Hawken published a book called Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. The book documents grassroots activism around the world, ranging from NGOs to billionaire philanthropists to local, individual efforts. The movement is enormous, but so widely dispersed that it…
New Neighbors
The UN Climate Summit known as COP26, which took place in Glasgow, Scotland, this month, was notable for the older, white men who dominated the official sessions and the much more diverse and younger crowds demonstrating outside. Less visible were representatives of religious groups from around the world, although many were there and some had…
All Lives Matter
With all the horrible news these days, one story that stopped me in my tracks recently was Scott Simon’s tribute to Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who died at the hands of police in 2019 in Aurora, Colorado. Last week three police officers and two paramedics where indicted in his death. As he walked…
We Are All Racists
Racist is an ugly label. Those accused of racial discrimination often defend themselves by saying, “I am not a racist!” We’ve heard people ranging from Pres. Donald Trump to celebrity chef Paula Deen make that claim, most recently Amy Cooper, after she called 911 about an “African American man” she encountered in Central Park, who…
Me Too: A Letter to Anita Hill
Thank you, Anita Hill, for having the courage to speak out about the sexual harassment you had experienced from Clarence Thomas, when he was nominated as a Supreme Court Justice in 1991. Many of us watched aghast at how quickly you became the one on trial by a panel of white male senators who had…
Consuming Violence
Once again dozens of people have been shot by a single gunman, this time in Las Vegas, and we are left wondering why we continue to see this kind of carnage. Those on the political left blame lack of sufficient gun laws to prevent someone from acquiring weapons with the capacity to inflict such devastation….