Twenty years ago, filmmaker Michael Moore launched a show called TV Nation. I vividly remember the CEO Challenge episode. He stood outside of corporate headquarters and called for CEOs to perform tasks appropriate to the products they sold. He wanted the CEO of IBM to...
The other day, dozens of tornados swept through the Midwest. Lives lost. Property destroyed. Such widespread and severe storms are unusual this late in the year.Having recently moved, this was the first storm I would watch from a high-rise condo. I wondered if we’d...
Some years ago I heard the author Russell Banks speak at Cincinnati’s Mercantile Library. He said something to the effect that 19thcentury Americans who could read and write deeply valued their ability to do so. They believed they had something to say – that...
As I watched the fear generated by the attacks in Paris morph into fear of Syrian refugees in America, I was curious to know more about Americans’ reactions to immigration over the years. When did it begin? At what point were there so many new arrivals that the...
Our friends down the Peninsula reminded us that we left “some sort of speaker” at their Little Cottage last year. They thought we might want to take it to the cottage we’re renting this month.Turns out it was the kind of speaker where you plug your iPhone into the...