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Sunbeams

Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Made To Be Broken

Richard Albert On The Difficulty Of Amending The U.S. Constitution

The way Americans interact with each other now has made it clear that the Constitution was perhaps never deserving of all the praise it’s gotten.

Of History And Hope

We have memorized America, / how it was born and who we have been and where. / In ceremonies and silence we say the words, / telling the stories, singing the old songs. / We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Sunbeams

To earn one’s bread by the sweat of one’s brow has always been the lot of mankind. At least, ever since Eden’s slothful couple was served with an eviction notice. The scriptural precept was never doubted, not out loud. No matter how demeaning the task, no matter how it dulls the senses and breaks the spirit, one must work. Or else.

Studs Terkel

Sunbeams

They argued about the weather, sports, sex, war, race, politics, and religion; neither of them knew much about the subjects they debated, but it seemed that the less they knew the better they could argue.

Richard Wright, “The Man Who Went to Chicago”

The Elephant In The Room

Rick Perlstein On The Evolution Of The American Conservative Movement

In a lot of ways the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in 1861 found its modern parallel on January 6, 2021.

Life, Without Imitation

Some nights, when medication and meditation have failed to put me to sleep, I think of the relatives who abandoned my family to become white people.