Mark's Blog

A national day of Thanksgiving was first declared by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, to be observed at the end of the harvest season, in late November. Over the decades the date moved around several times, and in 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt issued a...

“Beware of getting hooked,” a trusted friend and colleague advised me when I asked her what to watch out for when I was moving to a new position, a new city, a new life. “You have a tendency to get hooked by people who get under your skin because of the pain they live...

A challenge for all of us these days, regardless of where we fall on the political or religious continuum, is to stay grounded. Feet and soul firmly planted on terra firma. We are buffeted about by so many opinions, orders, actions and reactions– mostly framed in...

Exile. Lament. Love. Repeat. A sequence I have settled on to help me deal with the chaos and cruelty that is swirling around us and raising havoc within us. Certainly around and within me. Exile. Exile involves being barred or sent away from one’s country. That is...

We have a new de facto Congress. It has not been voted in by various constituencies across the country, but it has been elected. By one person -- the President. The qualifications for this rump Congress are becoming increasingly clear: loyalty and wealth.The...

As vengeance, threats of violence, and vilification continue to take over the airwaves – and increasingly get deployed on many of our city streets – there is an ever more urgent need to expand the concept of love. Not only to expand it, but empower love to wade into...

As an airplane taxis toward takeoff, I invariably treat the mandatory instruction from the flight attendant as annoying background noise: “Make sure you put your own oxygen mask on before assisting others”. Most of us don’t pay any attention, because we figure such a...

A vivid memory burst into my consciousness a few days ago, which has, for me, a direct connection to the recent deployment of the National Guard in several US cities.Several years ago I was sitting at the old Yankee Stadium, attending a Red Sox-Yankee game. My friends...