“There are the haves and the have-nots.” “The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” These are a few of the sayings I heard from my parents growing up in a small rural farming community. Expressions my working class parents who never finished grade school used to help themselves understand and accept their positions. My father spent most of his working life as a share cropper and then as an hourly factory worker. My mother worked as a hotel maid and then as a second-shift care taker in a

Opportunities vary, but never has so much information been accessible to so many. Still, otherwise hardworking adults shrink from seeking treasures of knowledge within their grasp. “Just tell me what I need to know for my job,” they say. Natural curiosity burns from birth, but do we extinguish it? In Thomas Gray’s famous “Elegy on a Country Churchyard,” the speaker wonders about anonymous graves where rustics lie. The fate of 18th-Century peasants in England was hard labor, illiteracy, and

Hash-tagging began eleven years ago when Chris Messina, a SanFran techie and Google developer, tried to find a way to bring focus to topics and connect like-minded individuals through social media. Though he received some initial pushback from friends, his idea caught on -- like “#Wildfire,” right? Like any good idea shared with the masses, it’s led to “hashtag overuse and hashtag abuse.” While originally used to highlight topics and provide a virtual “town square” where like-minded people could

I was talking the other day with one of my teachers, who told me that she wished school were year round. That way, she explained, students would remember more and the beginning to the year would go a lot smoother, without students having to relearn everything they forgot over the summer. I just chuckled and shook my head. I’m still in high school, and I’m here to tell you why our conventional summer is so awesome, especially in comparison with year - round school. From an educational perspective

Aren’t wind turbines graceful, like gymnasts doing cartwheels ? Don’t they make environmental sense, better than smoke stacks burning fossil fuels? But each wind turbine swallows an acre of ground, and that doesn’t count the roads needed to service them, nor does it count for transmission lines. Remember it takes coal to make the steel towers. The turbines run on sophisticated magnets that use rare earth metals, turning that region of China into a toxic wasteland. It takes ten years for them to

Recently the Supreme Court reviewed without rejecting the partisan practice of redistricting -- "Gerrymandering." Critics charged the Court with ignoring a national outrage. This criticism is both dangerous and misguided. It is dangerous becau se it threatens the separation of powers. Judges are not roving problem solvers. Courts apply general rules to specific cases. The facts of the case must be suitable for the application of a general rule. The rule must be neutral to the different parties

Shouting in a storm is a waste of time. So much anger. So much hate. I usually don’t want to be part of that noise. But now I need to scream. Because there’s blood on the newsroom floor. I can see it clearly. I can smell it. I can feel the room aching from the pain. Because this time it’s real. And I’ve been in the room. I say this time because threats often become a grenade of dark humor that newsrooms kick around between deadlines and headlines. We joke about craziness in the world. Gallows

I have just returned from the annual family reunion. Gathered from eight states, we played , laughed, told family stories to the youngest members of our tribe and yet something…. Something waited, stalking, quietly watching from the tree line. It waited until ten minutes before I left. My cousin said, “I love Trump.” There it was, finally, spoken out loud. In a way it was a relief. “I know, I don’t.” She looked at me, “I know, I do”. She stepped into “the house divided” and wanted to talk. I

Last month t he Freeport Public Library Board of Trustees voted on whether to install the National Motto, “In God We Trust,” on the exterior of the Library’s building, a project which was advanced by the City of Freeport, who has installed the signs on all public buildings in town -- a very contentious topic among residents. At the library board meeting, the large room was packed to standing room only, and citizens on both sides of the issue spoke passionately about their perspective. The public

I’m taking solace on my front porch these long summer days. Basking in the semi-outdoors as I view the parade of neighbors led by their canine friends. The problem though is most of my porch time is consumed by reading the New York Times – usually while listening to NPR (on WNIJ of course). Digesting the news, I go from feeling aghast, irate, fed up and fearful into a numbing sense of helplessness. And then I get mad all over again when I realize I may be falling prey to “learned helplessness.”