Wade Rathke:

Pearl River     Even here along the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River, the temperature has edged down a couple of degrees, signaling Labor Day’s arrival.  In my time this meant school was starting and no matter what the thermometer read, it was fall, doggone it, and time to pull out the long-sleeved shirts and get ready […]

Pearl River     There was a peculiar piece in the Wall Street Journal that left me scratching my head and then trying to remember, somewhat successfully, high school algebra.  The article talked about the gap between service workers and professionals getting to work at home and often keeping their jobs.  Ok, sure, but what had caught […]

Pearl River      I’m enrolled in the lifetime learning program for organizers.  The sessions are usually not online, but they happen there, too.  Most of the classes are in real-time on the streets and with lots of people involved. I know how to count.  I’ve counted crowds.  I’ve worked out a formula for counting marches based […]

Pearl River     If service work had been the equivalent of a jobs’ “safety net” for workers in many cities and towns in the past, the only replacement available would seem to be “gig” work.  What kind of safety net for the working class would that be? I talked recently to the well-known and highly regarded […]

New Orleans     Perhaps the most dependable host on WAMF, our low power noncommercial radio station in New Orleans, has been a product representative for a fine local distillery in the city.  Her show every Tuesday afternoon, “Road to the Ramones,” is a rocking, eclectic mix with feminist and contextual highlights that keep you thinking […]

New Orleans     Bjorn Skogquist was a former mayor of one of the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs some fifteen miles away, when he was a young man.  He did a couple of terms and went on with his life.  That didn’t mean he no longer paid attention.  Watching how the police handled protestors after the George […]

\New Orleans      Finally, one of the deep, dark secrets of home ownership and home buying is coming to light – the mysterious, highly subjective, largely unregulated world of real estate appraisers.  For those lucky enough to own a home, whining about appraisals and in fact arguing about values assigned to property seems somehow inappropriate.  […]

Pearl River     In a week when double-barreled hurricanes, Marcos and Laura, threatened the Louisiana coast, the fifteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its devastation of New Orleans and parts of the Mississippi Gulf Coast are easy to forget.  Remembrances are small and solemn, as people still crouch down in the pandemic.  Some articles ran on […]

Pearl River     A million years ago a random snip of an article or book or something, I honestly don’t remember, made what seemed to me a profound observation.  The author or reporter said that one of the weaknesses of modern America at the time – 50 years ago – is that we collected more information […]

Pearl River     You no longer need to read the sports pages to see what’s happening with athletes, because their actions are now turning up on the front page. The NBA playoffs may be happening in a bubble in Orlando, Florida, but these professional basketball players are not sequestered from the news in the rest of […]