In the Midst
At a time of celebration, I like to have a song in my heart. In this strange moment, when we observe 250 years since the Declaration of Independence while our profoundest assumptions and most valued institutions are being trashed by our present administration, what song meets my mood and offers the inspiration and meaning I…
The great pine tree on the south side of our house, with its intricate weave of branches and fulsome long green needles, has long been a favorite landing place for osprey whose nest is a little bit down river. Quite often we fail to see an osprey cocooned in the tree limbs until it suddenly swoops…
No turn of history occurs for only one reason. A convergence of influences made President Trump decide to join with Israel to launch an attack on Iran. There are reasons, there are rationales, there are calculations, there are ramifications. And there is the gut. Pundits have addressed all these threads in the past days and…
On January 24, as she announced the program at a packed performance of the Cape Symphony in Hyannis, Massachusetts, Maestro Alyssa Wang introduced a work by Arnold Schoenberg by describing his situation as a Jew composing modernist music in Berlin in the 1930s. With Hitler’s rise to power, Schoenberg’s music was declared “degenerate,” and as…
Book Review of Autocracy, Inc.: The dictators who want to run the world by Anne Applebaum, Doubleday, 2024. The following review was published on August 5, 2025 on the website www.WeAreOneHumanity.org. We who grew up in the West in the immediate post-World War II world assumed that rule of law, humanitarianism, human rights, international cooperation,…