Joe Biden was elected President for many reasons, among them simply that he wasn't Donald Trump. Compared to his predecessor, Biden was a decent, honest, homespun guy with a strong background in foreign relations, a belief in America's global leadership in defense of democratic principles, and a commitment to international alliances among nations with largely …
Continue reading Biden State-of-the-Union speech a mixed bag
First, an apology to Mitt Romney. Prior to the 2012 election, then-Presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared that Russia was our biggest geopolitical threat. During the campaign, Barack Obama blasted him for saying Russia rather than Al Qaeda. Obama mocked Romney for being mired in a Cold War mentality. Many of us chuckled dismissively along with …
Whoopi Goldberg is in hot water again, this time for insisting on ABC’s The View that the Holocaust was not about race but “about man’s inhumanity to man.” She doubled down the next night on Stephen Colbert, reducing the Holocaust to a conflict between white folks, telling him that, if a Klan member were chasing her and a Jewish …
The Promise by Damon Galgut won the 2021 Booker Prize. A family saga set in South Africa, it focuses on the Swart family from 1986 to 2018, mirroring the country’s emergence from apartheid to the uncertain promise of the present. It is first and foremost a family saga, set against the backdrop of historical events. …
Continue reading More books to curl up with in wintertime – pt. 2, fiction
The snow is hard and reaches almost to the window sill. The temperature is below freezing. The sky is gray. What better escape than settling in with a good book? Today, I have some non-fiction suggestions. Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother’s Letter to her Son by Homeira Qaderi, is a deeply moving memoir …
Continue reading Books to curl up with in wintertime – pt. 1, non-fiction
Nearly eight years ago, I sat at a small table at a Peet's Coffee shop across from a pretty, pert, smart and saucy woman, the former head of the state Attorney General's Civil Rights Division and chief of its Business and Labor Bureau. A former Hale & Dorr attorney, her greatest satisfaction, she said, came …
Remember Dr. Li Wenliang, the Wuhan whistleblowing eye doctor whose warnings to medical colleagues about the not-yet-identified Covid virus were dismissed by Chinese authorities as "false comments" and rumors? In January 2020 my info-holic husband told me about Dr. Li and predicted this could be the start of a dangerous pandemic. I remember our discussions …
This was the speech many have been waiting for for months: the President standing in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol and speaking the truth about the democracy-defying January 2021 insurrection. Conciliatory softness would just not do for the first anniversary of the lethal violence when a mob, incited by the former, defeated President, tried …
Continue reading Calling out Trump’s web of lies is just Step One
The galaxy lost a stellar jewel last night with the passing of WCVB-TV's bright and talented Mary Richardson. Sadly, her star had gradually lost its sparkle over the seven years in which her dark disease - Alzheimer's - increasingly sucked her into the void and stole her essence. Her loss - to her devoted husband …
I like to think of myself as a glass-half-full sort, looking for reasons to be optimistic even when events in this country seem to be circling the drain and democracy seems more fragile than ever. Realism does matter because, if you aren't clear-eyed about the problems, how can you seek solutions? But, as a recovering …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 