NOTES FROM THE ROAD: On Stewardship

I was walking on 1st Avenue, south of the Pike Place Market, when I heard two men talking loudly. They were close enough to make me turn and look. The guys were burly, not in the best of shape, not old, but not young; it’s hard to tell someone’s age. What caught me by surprise was that they were making disparaging remarks about my city.  


Book Review: The Air They Breathe

Reno, Nevada has the dubious distinction of being identified as the fastest-warming city in the country due to greenhouse gas emissions, and in recent years Hendrickson’s young patients are increasingly suffering from the effects of wildfire smoke, heat exhaustion, asthma, and even dangerous new virus outbreaks.


Harris Can Stop Losing the Senior Vote to Trump

Harris is losing senior voters to Trump by not presenting crisp, short points that can be easily understood, such as addressing their concerns that Social Security Income (SSI) benefits are too meager and may not continue. 


UNITED OR DIE: “A Prescription for Our Global Superorganism"

UNITED OR DIE: “A Prescription for Our Global Superorganism” is the final essay in a six-part series by Dr. Peter Corning. He argues that we are on a road to collective self-destruction unless we make a radical course change.


How Are Biden and Harris Endangering Trump’s Safety?

Former President Donald Trump blames Vice President Kamala Harris for the assassination attempt on him. He told Fox News Digital that the would-be assassin had “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it.” What did the potential assassin believe that the Democrats had said? 

 


NOTES FROM THE WORKING CLASS: Javon Monte 1994 - 2024

The blue-skied Seattle day is warm for February 8th. I walk across the freeway overpass on Madison Avenue and turn right onto 6th Avenue. A man is huddled on the steps leading up to the Plymouth Congregational Church. The building is the color of a white palace. The man is young, black, lean, but he takes up the entire landing at the bottom of the steps; his battered blue backpack is large and looks heavy. He is crying, sobbing into a blinding-white concrete buttress.


Book Review: Love and Garbage by Ivan Klima

We get old and what is erased? If that is the philosophical question to be explored in this sweeping work (no pun intended), then Ivan Klima answers it. It is difficult to fall in love with “Love and Garbage.” The title alone feels like the author is intent on destroying love the same way one would toss garbage into a incinerator to watch it explode. The narrative covers the protagonist’s childhood through to his adulthood—he is a great literary writer reduced to being a street sweeper by the Czech Communist regime that censors his work. 


Book Review: A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux

On the surface, Ernaux’s work is unapologetically unsentimental, but on a deeper level, her finely crafted prose conjures many layers of raw emotion that have been stripped of all pretense.