This past Monday on Valentine’s Day, the “hate crime” trial for the convicted murderers of Ahmaud Arbery began in Brunswick, a small coastal community in southeast Georgia. This should not be overlooked either locally or by the larger national audience. It holds great promise for what should be a wake-up call about who we are…
Discombobulated
My absence from writing recently reflects my disappointment with politics, politicians and contemporary goings-on. Like many of you, the repetitious drone of the media along with the disgraceful behavior of Republican leadership and many others has gotten me down. This together with disillusionment with friends whom I thought I knew has especially driven me to…
More from Up North
Here is an interesting opinion piece from this Monday’s Globe and Mail in Ottawa. It strikes me as a reasonable take on the issue. I would like to hear from those who might find this argument to be a threat to the exercise of personal freedom. We’ll lift our anti-COVID restrictions when elected governments decide,…
News from Canada on the Truck Mess
While I have not been writing lately, I have kept up with current events and the state of our union. I’ve simply been taking some time off from the Potlatch Tertulia to think about things. When this timely article arrived from George Shafer in Almonte, Ontario, I felt compelled to share it with you given…
The Truth About Guns
This is an important book. It talks knowledgeably about guns and the nasty relationship between the NRA and American politics. This co-dependence has helped bring carnage to the country’s streets and schools for too long. Today, any discussion of guns raises the adrenalin of outrage by opponents and proponents much in the same way as…
Teaching History
Given my career teaching history, I feel compelled to say a few words concerning the current brouhaha about the teaching of history. As a subject, history is usually not given much attention until some politician or political partisan stumbles on to something they can use to push their cause. Right now, history is important in…
Lunch with Trump Republicans
The last couple years I’ve had lunch with several friends who voted for Trump in 2016 and continued to support him in 2020. They were good friends whom I’d known for years. We’d never really talked about politics other than a casual reference to issues we might have in common. Then the Trump presidency changed…
The Shame of It
The first year anniversary of the attack on the Capital last January 6 promises political fireworks and nonsensical polemics. Democrats, many independents and others will see the date as a failure of our democracy and be critical of those who perpetrated the awful actions of that day. Others, led by Republicans, will downplay the attack…
What Do You Think?
Like most of you, I grew up at a time when there were not today’s “culture wars,” opposition to getting shots to stay healthy, or attacks on the nation’s capital with the intent to overturn a presidential election. I also had the good fortune to spend a career teaching and writing about history without fear…