He wasn't there in person, but Donald Trump was the big winner at the GOP's 2024 primary debate. In a display of cowardice and moral corruption, six of the eight candidates said that they would vote for Trump even if the former President were convicted of the crimes for which he has been charged. Just …
Continue reading GOP debate: the elephant was in the room and outside too
Going Back to T-Town: The Ernie Fields Territory Big Band by Boston journalist Carmen Fields is a memoir of her father, trombonist, pianist, music arranger and band leader of the Ernie Fields Big Band. The saga covers many of the swing bands and jazz groups that enlivened the American music scene in the middle of …
I met Benjamin Netanyahu some 40 years ago at a small dinner at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. I saw him again at a larger event, an impassioned speech on terrorism. It was just after he founded an anti-terrorism institute named for his brother, killed in Operation Antebbe. He was handsome, suave, articulate and charismatic. …
Continue reading Netanyahu – the new face of authoritarianism
The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather was a War Criminal by Sylvia Foti was the fulfillment of a pledge Foti made to her dying mother to write a memoir of the author’s highly esteemed grandfather, Lithuanian general and national hero Jonas Noreika. Foti grew up in the Lithuanian community of Chicago, sustained by …
Continue reading Autobiography and memoir for intimate summer reading
This week marks the 50th anniversary of hip hop music, and many platforms, including National Public Radio and the New York Times, are celebrating the phenomenon. For those of us immersed in or more comfortable with Beethoven, the Beatles, Mahalia Jackson or Peter, Paul and Mary, the wonderment should not be underestimated. In fact, I …
Continue reading The birth of hip hop, and how it grew and grew and grew
Trump and his acolytes are whining across media platforms that Tuesday's grand jury indictment of Donald Trump is a violation of his First Amendment rights. The villains, they complain, are the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the criminalization of ordinary political speech. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before anyone joins the …
Continue reading Assigned reading for civics class: Trump Indictment
Marjorie Arons-Barron 