By DENNIS HARROD Ken Lindblom is hoping no one throws a brick through his window. He has no reason to think anybody will, but when you’re a small-town newspaper editor, people sometimes take exception to strong opinions. And when you run stories with headlines such as “The Trump Dictatorship Has Begun,” tempers might flare. Since …
By DENNIS HARROD I had an opportunity today to do what I always say I will do. But I didn’t do it. After nearly two hours in the rain at the Hands Off rally in Hamilton, N.Y. April 5, I was walking back to where I’d parked a couple of blocks away. As I walked …
By DENNIS HARROD “For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home.” From the Gospel of Matthew Across the globe, more than 43 million people are refugees, people forced to flee their own country. Their future …
By JIM McKEEVER We create false worlds to survive. I guess this has always been the case, human nature and all. But as humanity and collective empathy crumble around us, the false worlds we create have become more apparent. And more dangerous. How much time, energy and money do we devote to things that distract …
By JIM McKEEVER This summer’s projects around the house have renewed my respect for those who do manual labor — the kind that some people refer to as “unskilled.” Whether the term is used as an insult or as a lazy, clueless adjective doesn’t matter. It’s just plain wrong. These thoughts came to mind, appropriately …
By JIM McKEEVER I’ve long been a practitioner of “thin-slicing,” making assessments of a person within the first few minutes of an encounter. Author Malcolm Gladwell popularized the term in his 2005 book, “Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking.” I immediately go through my mental checklist of the person’s politics, values, income level, their …
By JIM McKEEVER The blue and yellow flags of Ukraine that flew so proudly in our communities last year have faded. Many have disappeared from front porches, yards and windows. I guess we’re tired of reading and hearing about the war, more than a year after Vladimir Putin invaded the sovereign nation next door. (Perhaps …
Editor’s note: Five additional portraits are below McLaughlin’s essay. By BILL McLAUGHLIN Many years ago while working on environmental issues and getting quite angry at the political and corporate entities that were contaminating the air and groundwater in the rural area where I was living, an experienced activist and dear friend gave me some advice …
By JIM McKEEVER Our hurry-up society provides plenty of tests of civility and decency — mundane, everyday experiences and encounters that reveal a great deal about who we are as individuals and as a community. Coffee shop lines. Grocery store shopping carts. Red lights and stop signs. How are we doing? That’s hard to quantify. …
By JIM McKEEVER It was a few minutes after the pizza joint opened at 11 a.m. on a dreary Monday morning in Middle America. I pulled the rental SUV into a parking space in the the empty lot, transferred a $5 bill from my wallet to my front pocket and pulled up a photo of …
Sense of Decency 