My husband’s grandfather, Louis Lipsky, immigrated from Slavuta, Ukraine 117 years ago. He left his native land for the US to escape violent pogroms, poverty, and war. Forty years later, he lost his only son in the Second World War. I don’t know whether Louis Lipsky would feel solidarity with Ukraine today, but I’m certain that at his core he would know that war only brings destruction and heartbreak.
When I started this blog, I promised myself I wouldn’t use any lightning-rod words that tend to send people scampering off to their narrow cultural corners. That included names of…
At the height of the 2020 BLM protests, I commented on a thread in an Italian-American Facebook group that sparked fury. Statues of Christopher Columbus had been vandalized across the…
Overheard at the doctor’s office recently: “Do you identify as Caucasian or non-Caucasian?” A secretary was screening a patient over the phone with what’s become a common question—one I hadn’t…
In my recent post (Don’t Box Us In), I explored a subtle way our society perpetuates a sense of racial division, which had me wondering how we might accelerate systemic…
Last week’s post spoke to bridging cultural and philosophical divides, as told through the story of my own Jewish-Catholic marriage. This made finding a thematically connected nonprofit a bit challenging,…
Picture the type of person you think represents society’s worst enemy today. Is it a Wall Street hedge fund manager? Proud Boy Q-Anon follower? Third-world refugee? A communist? Then fast-forward…
The Women’s March four years ago was a reflexive response by women who felt cheated by a system dominated by men since its inception. I’m grateful that the worldwide march…
The Black Lives Matter protests in Portland are nearing 80 nights of activism. And as described in last week’s post, Hogwarts Meets Portland, the protests have been relatively peaceful since…
Funny how fiction and reality often merge. Each reflects the other, no matter how much time passes between when a story was written and when a person interprets it. Such…