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    In 2015 the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. These include ending poverty, empowering women, providing universal education, sustaining the environment, and several more. The 17th goal concerns partnerships: how... Read More →

  Despite being brought up by generous, loving people, I never felt at home in the suburban tract house where I misspent my youth. My dad was a slick-talking charmer who hadn’t energy for much beyond drinking, gambling, and chasing women, though he was, in his way, generous... Read More →

  THE WEAPONIZATION OF LONELINESS: HOW TYRANTS STOKE OUR FEAR OF ISOLATION TO SILENCE, DIVIDE, AND CONQUER Stella Morabito (Bombardier Books, 2022, paper, 304 pages, $19.99) THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TOTALITARIANISM Mattias Desmet (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, hardcover, 240... Read More →

    The inside of the place was rinsed in shadow, dust particles swirling in the opaque light. Newspapers were stacked on the counter; a local rag trumpeting rape and murder and a smudged racetrack tip sheet lay nearby. On the wall, a mounted cigarette rack housed... Read More →

    “The future belongs to people with children, not with things,” wrote Charles Chaput in First Things a few months ago. If you are young and you want to change the world, counsels the Catholic archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia, then “get married, stay faithful to one... Read More →

Recently, we have heard a good deal about the family during our national discontents. Those sworn to the progressive ideology blame the family for perpetuating what the Soviets used to call “dissidence”; they even go so far as to insist that children denounce parents if they fail... Read More →

  In the days following the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft of the Dobbs case, which threatens Roe v Wade, Amazon announced it would contribute up to $4000 to any employee who must travel to get an abortion.  Abortion as economics.  A court decision may not affect overmuch... Read More →

My mother grew up in Rego Park, Queens, New York. She said the developer who named the town got “Rego” from a contraction of “Real Good.” The daughter of strict German immigrants, being raised in the shadow of World War II, she embodied the first-generation ethos of dreams... Read More →

  I am the proud owner of a coffee mug that displays wisely worded encouragement from Thoreau: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. I got it at a high-end “Second Time Around” sale at a well-heeled Episcopal Church in New York City—for... Read More →

I am rarely left speechless. Snappy retorts are part of my native language, and those few times when my mother’s instructions for what to do when I cannot say anything nice dominate my response, the conversation in question is likely a memorable one. Oddly enough, these... Read More →