The world’s largest exercise in democracy begins April 19 in India — an enterprise so vast as to boggle the mind. Encompassing a million separate polling stations, employing 15 million election workers, spread over six weeks, the national parliamentary elections…
Being there
A few years ago, I helped an Afghan refugee find a job. He spoke very little English, but he had some plumbing experience from Afghanistan. I took him to an interview at a plumbing company in my town. I worried…
Navalny died for freedom. Will we live for it?
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent voice for freedom, is dead at 47 — murdered outright or worn down by the police state that relentlessly arrested him, jailed him, poisoned him, tormented him and finally sent him to the brutal Arctic…
A geezer Valentine for Lent
It’s Valentine’s Day, and Ash Wednesday. I’m sitting in the waiting room of my urologist, watching an endless procession of old men come and go. I’m one of them: the brotherhood of enlarged prostates and the thousand other natural shocks…
God of the specific
Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Already broken them? Join the club. Odds are you’re vowing to lose weight, get more exercise, get a handle on your finances, etc. If those haven’t worked in the past, here’s a better resolution,…
Things fall apart. Is democracy one of them?
It feels like 1971. That was a bad year for libraries. Bad year for America. Hippies burning library cards. Abbie Hoffman telling everybody to steal books. And smirking funny boy Jerry Seinfeld checking out a book from the New York…
‘Useful idiots’ won’t end the Israel-Hamas war, and neither will a cease-fire
Picture yourself at a rowdy MAGA rally: Paramilitary types sporting AR-15s and Kevlar vests roam the area, calling for the downfall of any government not led by Donald Trump, their glorious leader. Neo-Nazis spew hatred of immigrants and minorities. Other…
Now comes the darkness. Perhaps new hope lies beyond
A week ago, I sat with a Palestinian shopkeeper in a country bordering Israel, drinking tea and watching nonstop Arab TV coverage of Israel’s retaliatory pounding of Gaza. Gazans ran in panic. Rescue workers screamed for ambulances and pulled dust-covered…
The Jesus Room
The Jesus Room lies in the bowels of Richmond’s cavernous First Baptist Church, one of those stately old churches that takes up most of a city block. It’s a part of the basement floor of the church, comprising a community…