Mark's Blog

The litany grows longer and more gut churning and heart wrenching by the day: Mass shootings (the Washington Post reports nearly 300 since January 1); Supreme Court decisions that leave millions of people reeling and afraid; Challenges around race and books and...

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another…”  Thus begins the Declaration of Independence, issued on July 4, 1776, which we commemorate today with fireworks,...

Like many, I am deeply distressed and disheartened by the recent Supreme Court rulings, the first which removes restrictions on where people can bring loaded guns in public, and the second which reverses Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to seek an abortion. ...

The national gun debate has become more intense, if not strident.  Some proposals for gun reform, already passed in the House of Representatives, are soon to come before the Senate.  There is an array of potential provisions in the various drafts of the Bill:  red...

In 1990, Ken Burns produced a documentary on the Civil War.  It ran for several weeks, and generated no end of conversation.  A friend of mine reflected that the Civil War was a battle for the national soul.  The documentary exposed serious flaws in the republic that...

While living in Japan after college, I remember taking an overnight ferry from Pusan, Korea to Shimonoseki, Japan.  I traveled third class, which meant that I had about a seven- foot by three-foot space on a carpeted platform on the lowest deck.  The platform was...

“Will you drape yourself over me, or should I drape myself over you?”, a teenage girl asked her friend as they walked the halls between classes at their high school in New Jersey.  She reported her statement to a group of teens who gathered with me shortly after the...