I ought to have your safety in mind when I wear my COVID-slowing mask in public. That would be noble. But I have a more gut-level motivation: Fear. Stark, naked fear. Fear of COVID is in the mix, but it is way back in my subconscious. Fear of getting my face slapped is right out there ...

President Harry Truman’s firing of General Douglas MacArthur for disobeying his orders during the Korean War was one of the more memorable events of my junior high years. Truman wanted a ceasefire, while MacArthur wanted to press the war further and bomb cities in China, which had been ...

People generally have a basic understanding of the long-term civic story of the community where they live if they’ve lived there for any length of time. Their version may not be totally accurate, but most people are able to connect their community’s past to what is happening there now. This ...

Over the last few years New York has adopted legislation that provides short-term benefits for some low-income tenants but creates very serious potential long-term issues for many of the same people, including higher rents, a potential housing shortage, and more homelessness. In 2019, the New ...

As a Vietnam veteran, I have been especially troubled by recent events in Afghanistan. We don’t seem to learn from the lessons of history. We thought, relative to Vietnam, that military might along with American know-how could turn around a civil war between North and South Vietnam. We ...

As we start to open up our senior centers and congregate meal sites, I am getting questions from older adults about how vaccines work. Can we mandate that everyone who comes into our building be vaccinated? And are we protected from the Delta variant of COVID-19? I will try to answer these ...