On a cold Saturday morning, walking with my son’s Cub Scout pack as we collected cans of food for the needy, I saw a pickup truck I liked. It was early, and the few residents we saw out and about looked a bit the worse for wear, many hotfooting it out in pajamas across cold…

Time was when I traveled upwards of 100,000 miles each year for work. I spent a lot of time in airports, getting on planes, getting off of planes, waiting for planes. This spanned both before and after the many changes that 9/11 wrought on the experience of air travel in the United States. Security is…

(Appeared in The Christian Science Monitor November 26, 2004) The other night – it seems now like years ago and not weeks – a political placard was ripped from my yard and strewn in the bushes. Defiantly replacing it on the crisp morning after, I recalled how, a decade earlier, I used to paint over…

On a sunny June afternoon, my gym towel forgotten by my side, I stood with what seemed like the entire YMCA membership in downtown Los Angeles as we watched the TV. A white Bronco was slowly making its way along an Interstate freeway. We could not hear any commentary, as the sound was turned off.…

At a recent showing of The Incredibles, there were five of us searching for seats together. The theater was about two-thirds full. It’s easy to find two together, and even four, but to get five, one needs to find a whole empty row. We found one, and filed into the spaces. As I sat down,…

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…

Along with many other Americans this morning, I am pondering what it all means that, after four years of intense labor things have changed very little. Only about three million votes appear to have moved over the last presidential term, in the face of unprecedented amounts spent trying to move voters this way and that,…

“Turn to your neighbor,” Arun Ghandi told us, “and make a fist. Pretend you are holding the world’s most valuable diamond.” I was at a global conference at Kennesaw State University, where Mahatma Ghandi’s grandson was giving the keynote. Mr. Gandhi is a potent speaker in his own right. “Now, neighbor: Try to get the…