Many money matters are trending in our economy. Some, like softening, but stubborn, inflation still tops the list of what people sense about these economic times. And while recent price reductions at McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and grocery food chains, like Stop & Shop, suggest retailers are sensing that consumers have reached a tipping point and are …
Our guest, Alexandre Lefebvre, author of “Liberalism as a Way of Life”, poses a provocative question–where do our values and beliefs come from in a time when fewer of us claim to belong to a specific religion or follow it in any meaningful way? We might say from our parents, our friends, our experiences, or …
The opioid crisis doesn’t get the headlines it once did, but in no way should that fact be interpreted as suggesting it’s gone away. By all accounts it remains stubbornly destructive and shocking in its impacts. We’ve moved it out of the doctor’s office and pharmacists hands into the laps of the cartels which have …
Biases, prejudices and preconceptions are part of living. Sometimes it’s because of the way we were raised, the messages we receive through various sources and the politics of this moment, as the GOP’s presumptive presidential candidate refers to people coming across the border as ‘animals’. In the multi-racial and multi-ethnic society in which we live, …
Climate change(aka global warming)and warming denial– human-engineered and accelerating at a rapid clip–have been on display in America for at least 4 decades, dating back to when then Vice President Al Gore shared with us “An Inconvenient Truth.” Scientists were aware of what our industrial and consumer advances–electricity, gas guzzling cars and growing use of …
Many books have been written in the recent period about rural America. The beginning of this literary push to better understand the opportunities, problems and malignancies of what one author coined ‘overlooked Americans’ in the hinterlands of non-metropolitan areas was J. D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” which raised many questions. It dealt with the character of …
His day job involves commenting on what’s happening in real time around the globe but David Ignatius, the highly respected foreign affairs columnist of the Washington Post, also uses his journalistic sources and methods as the basis for compelling fiction. Thus his latest spy novel “Phantom Orbit” offers great insights into the importance of America’s …
One of the fastest growing demographic cohorts in America is men over the age of 60. Growing with this group, in a majority of instances, is their prostate. That gland gets much attention primarily as men age and doctors track their PSA number for the potential of being cancerous.. Less discussed, but quite impactful, is …
The pursuit of happiness is a birthright for those of us who are American citizens. It’s right there in the Declaration of Independence, which itself seems rather odd. We are not guaranteed that state of satisfaction and by recent polling and just a good look around there are lots of unhappy people in this country. …