journalism blog

Monsters in Black

I wonder what if it had been me? I was an altar boy from 1959 to 1964. I attended a large Catholic elementary school in one of the largest parishes in Brooklyn, New York. It was so big, we had a bishop as our pastor with about five priests working under him. You felt special

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Life in a Book

I’ve spent my life reading. When I started out in school, I wasn’t a good speller. I used to get nervous before spelling tests. But, my spelling got better as I learned to read. It’s such an important part of everyday life. No one can remember when they couldn’t read. Being a journalist, I spent

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Words of a Dreamer

It was one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century. Delivered at the right time, in the right place, by the right person. It was sunny and hot 55 years ago, on August 28, 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to 250,000 people, and the world, while

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Endangered

The people in charge say there are too many rules and regulations. That includes the rules to safeguard the world around us. We are pulling out of the Paris Climate agreement. We had a guy in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency who wanted to eliminate many of the rules to protect clean air and

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War Story

Journalists are suppose to be fair, even handed, and even dispassionate. They have to defend their work when challenged. That has never been truer than today when journalists have been called “the enemy of the people” and purveyors of “fake news”. This past week was the 155th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg which turned

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Men I Never Knew

This Sunday we will all being celebrating Father’s Day. It’s a day with a long history that started in Catholic dominated Europe in the Middle Ages. It was originally celebrated on March 19th, St. Joseph’s Day in honor of the guy we have all been trying to live up to for two thousand years. It

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A Little Help From His Friends

The crowd was middle age. There was a lot of gray hair and bald spots. About 24 hundred of us were gathered at the Borgata Event Center to hear and see the man who will forever remind us of our youth and the turbulent times when we came of age. As with many iconic figures,

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All the Young Men

It was 13 years ago, but it was trip I will never forget. We went to Paris for our 3oth wedding anniversary. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to Normandy to see the beaches of D-Day and the American Cemetery and Memorial. My father-in-law had landed on Utah beach in August of 1944

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Hidden Justice

One of the most important and damaging stories in the last 25 years has been the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests that went on for decades and was covered up by superiors. A coverup that allowed the crimes to continue for years. Thousands of  vulnerable children from alter boys to high school girls

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Gunfire in the Darkness

This time it was a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee in the middle of the night. A man who should never have had a gun pulled up to the restaurant, got out of his car, and opened fire with everyone’s favorite assault weapon, the AR-15. Two people were shot and killed in the parking lot. Two more

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