From The Christian Science Monitor When I first moved to my neighborhood from another state, I was amazed when the shopkeeper at the dry cleaner’s learned my name within just a few visits. I had only been living there for a couple of weeks when one day, I swung open the door and she looked…

Walking my children to elementary school, we pass by a handful of folks out about morning business. We smile at them, and nod. To some, those we know by face or name, we say “good morning.” It’s the Thursday after the Tuesday. According to the morning news reports, emotions are still high. Each of us,…

A column in The Washington Note (Steve Clemons) has attracted a lot of conversation. It’s titled “America: F**k Yeah!” The line, from the movie Team America: World Police, is portrayed as a favorite of those who subscribe to “a kind of pugnacious nationalism that has taken hold of the American personality. . . .[W]hat Walter…

The long knives have been drawn and sides chosen over Kitty Kelley’s new book that purports to uncover generations’ worth of scandal in the Bush political family. It’s now a political football, but there are far darker books on the shelves of your local bookselling conglomerate. Books you really don’t have to read. At least…

(From the July 28, 2004 Washington Post) The recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts that reveals a precipitous drop in book reading among Americans has many wringing their hands. But the trend is nothing new, and its increased intensity over the past decade is only minor. We are a nation of people…

My daughter is an animal person; has been ever since she discovered them. She loves farms, pet stores, the pound, and the zoo. So I have been closely following the sad spectacle at the National Zoo. Management has fallen victim to a classic nonprofit ethics trap, one to which all mission-driven organizations are prone: they…

Last night I went to a nearby local candidates’ forum. What struck me is just how bad the entire experience was. Yes, I know that’s heresy. This should have been no surprise. On some level, it wasn’t — across America, local politics is always marked by an amateurish, “Our Gang” feel (you know, “Let’s put…

[This is a piece from November 13, 2000, originally published in Ethics Newsline, a publication of the Institute for Global Ethics. The original is here. As engagement in politics plummets ever more, and as the 2004 presidential campaigns heat up, it seems to have new relevance. Let me know what you think. –BR] As we…