Category: current events
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Let’s talk about sex
“In case you’re curious,” I once told the grandchildren, “Granddaddy and I have never had sex on the dining room table.” “Nana!” they shouted in embarrassment. I thought it important for them to know that sex between loving adults is not expressed in a frenzy of the aggressiveness they see on HBO or Netflix. Book…
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A message for graduates
No one’s asked me to speak at graduation, but I’ve prepared a message for seniors anyway. Theme: Values you’ve been taught in school—forget them. 1) Play fair. In sports and group projects you’ve been taught to work cooperatively, follow the rules, and lose gracefully. Forget it. Look out for Number One, remake the rules to…
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Is it left or right?
I’m confused. I no longer know left from right. Vladimir Putin was a member of the KGB of the Soviet Union, a communist confederation. Communists are considered to be on the Far Left of the political spectrum. But there is no longer a Soviet Union, hence no longer a communist state. Property that once belonged…
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Of What Value is a Book?
A few weeks after I arrived to spend a year with a German family in Berlin, I celebrated my sixteenth birthday. They gave me two books: The Diary of Anne Frank and Cry, the Beloved Country. These two books informed my life as no other books have. Until then I had no knowledge of the Holocaust, no idea that…
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In praise of librarians
Are parents who threaten librarians over particular books also carefully monitoring what their children watch on computers and television screens?
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When commitment becomes extreme
Mary Surratt and John Wilkes Booth believed they had a moral obligation to kill the president. Today 39% of Republicans believe violent action is sometimes called for.
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Sesame Street got it wrong
The results of the 2020 census are in. We know approximately how many Americans identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian, White, Other. Interesting, but relevant? I sometimes wonder if we’re wired to differentiate. Over here are plants. Some can heal your wound, some are tasty, and some are pretty to gather. Over here are animals. Some…
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RBG, Donald Trump. and me
You’ll be excused for thinking that Donald Trump, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I had little in common. But last week’s news of RBG’s death and Trump’s announcement that he’ll form a 1776 Commission tasked with promoting patriotic education left me thinking about how all three of us grew up studying the same version of American…
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Encountering the migrant
Empathy doesn’t come naturally to many of us. It’s easier to consider migrants as law breakers than as humanity caught in a crisis.
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Sexual assault in a sexualized culture
Can women, by speaking truthfully of our experiences, bring about a cultural shift? Only if the media quits portraying sex as an expectation of every encounter between a man and a woman.
Nancy Werking Poling 