journalism blog

Democrats are feeling confident and relieved after Joe Biden gave the speech of his life last night. It was all about hope, trust, honesty and decency. The contrast between Biden and Donald Trump couldn’t be sharper. The Democrats are painting the election as a race between a good, decent guy, who grew up in a

They come around every year, the Dog Days of Summer. The hot, sultry days that are supposed to be days at the beach, in the mountains, picnics, barbecues, trips to national parks, even to Europe, going to a ball game, looking forward to football in a few weeks, and squeezing the fun out of the

A friend of mine died suddenly a few days ago. I had played golf with him just two weeks earlier and he seemed fine. A couple days after we played, he went into the hospital and needed some serious surgery. A couple of days after the surgery, he died from complications. The unexpected suddenness of

In the last few days, we all started hearing about Juneteenth and the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre and burning of a prosperous black section of the city 99 years ago. They are two unrelated historical events brought together by a president who doesn’t understand history or the racial tension and reckoning that has been boiling over

How did we get here? It seems every day we are suffering another convulsion. Many think it started at the beginning of the year from hell with the coronavirus. China’s deception. Our country’s leaders’ incompetence. Let’s not deal with it and it will go away. Suddenly we were locked in our homes, millions out of

The unofficial start of summer in the age of coronavirus is upon us with the Memorial Day weekend coming up. The old Gershwin song told us, “Summertime, And the livin’ is easy”. Well, not so fast. Yes, all 50 states are starting to re-open, some quicker than others. The Jersey shore beaches and boardwalks will

We thought Trump had set the bar for how not to handle a national and global crisis. The mistakes, the lies, the blaming, the self congratulations, the dangerous cures, the denial of reality have all been very obvious. We have seen responsible leadership from governors like Cuomo of New York, Wolf of Pennsylvania, Murphy of

Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse. I know we are all trying to be hopeful and positive and pull together to get through the coronavirus pandemic. We have seen the bravery of our health care workers and first responders and the leadership of some of our governors. But the colossal failure of presidential

Many of us know of Anne Frank. The Jewish teenager who wrote the famous diary while hiding with her family from the Nazis in secret attic rooms in the Netherlands for two years. The Frank family had fled Germany to get away from the Nazis when Anne was young. When the Nazis overran the Netherlands

We all got through our virtual Passover and Easter celebrations to wake up today to a miserable day of rain, wind and tornado watches. We’re about halfway through April and have a couple of more weeks until Trump hopes we can start opening parts of the country and the get the economy moving again. He’s