Members of the National Transportation Safety Board on the scene Saturday, Feb. 1, of the mid-air collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and a an American Airlines jet over the Potomac River at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. *Courtesy NTSB.*

Losing my voice to find it in the Trump era

February 2, 2025

How are we to respond to the times in which we find ourselves? Should we retreat, understanding that they are beyond our control? Or should we, knowing they are beyond our control, respond Stoically — with courage and calm, understanding, in the words of Rev. Sydney Smith, that “it is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing, because you could only do a little.”

As I pondered this over the Christmas break and into January — the so-called “wellness month” — I got very sick and lost my voice, an apt metaphor for losing the inner voice that has always been my North Star.

In the end, I concluded that reticence — even when you cannot physically “speak” — is a kind of cowardice, and that it is incumbent upon us all to speak out.

A hard Megxit

January 22, 2020

Mike Bartlett’s 2017 play “King Charles III,” Queen Elizabeth II has died and Prince Charles succeeds her and immediately precipitates a constitutional crisis that has Prince William and wife Catherine looking to wrest the crown away from him. In the midst of rioting in the streets, Prince Harry falls in love with a black woman and decides to abandon royal life for her but in the end, acquiesces to remain in the fold and support the new king and queen.

Truth, of course, has a way of being stranger than fiction, for the real Prince Harry has gone further and farther than the fictional one ever does — all the way to Canada but stripped of His Royal Highness status and any state funding and required to repay the $3.1 million that British taxpayers shelled out to refurbish Frogmore Cottage, which was, is, his and wife Meghan’s home.

She, Tonya

February 22, 2018

On the eve of the ladies’ figure skating free skate, my thoughts turn not to Evgenia Medvedeva – who may lose the gold to her younger spitfire of a rival, Alina Zagitova – or Canada’s Kaetlyn Osmond, who wowed her way into bronze medal position with a sassy skate to Edith Piaf; or even to why the Japanese women did so much better than the Americans, who haven’t won a medal in this event since Sasha Cohen in 2006. No, today my thoughts turn to Tonya Harding.

Of course, they do. Her knee-whacking rivalry with Nancy Kerrigan, complete with a broken skate lace, made this night in 1994 at the Lillehammer Games appointment TV.

Harding has had quite a year ...

The curious case of the refugee travel ban

January 31, 2017

Day three of President Donald J. Trump’s seven-nation immigrant ban, and things are getting curiouser and curiouser.

Trump supporters say he’s just following former President Barack Obama’s lead, then claim Obama did nothing to prevent terrorism. Well, which is it? It can’t be both.

Then The New York Times reports that since nature abhors a vacuum, the Chinese – hardly the paragon of democracy – are ready to step in and lead the free world in free trade, which is looking mighty good to the Europeans. So much for making America great again. ...