ArcaMax

"For every park, there's a story of someone who saved it from becoming something else." Ever since I read these words in Jenny Odell's book "How to Do Nothing," I've wanted to find the stories of such people.

I love parks, and I love all that they bring to our lives. So when my Aunt Mary suggested we go hiking in one of her favorite spots ...Read more

Americans have this big obsession over population numbers. One reason is that reports related to population come with numbers. Numbers give politicians and journalists something concrete to either agonize or crow over.

The problem with this approach is that the numbers don't necessarily reflect the living reality of people being counted. ...Read more

"With fear for our democracy," Justice Sonia Sotomayor concludes in her brilliant dissent in Trump v. United States, "I dissent."

She is right. Very frighteningly right.

After reading what happened at the oral argument, I knew what was coming. The court was looking for a way to carve up the baby, giving some form of immunity to former ...Read more

MADISON, Wis. -- The presidential torch passed from Dwight D. Eisenhower, who seemed ancient at 70, to vigorous young John F. Kennedy, 43, a Bostonian who spoke these stirring words on a bright new day, snow glistening on marble: "Let the word go forth from this time and place ... that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans...Read more

For us Texans, there's nothing new about Bible-thumping politicians bedeviling us with the foolishness of their dogmatic Christian piety. A century ago, for example, a proposal was made to offer bilingual education to Spanish-speaking school kids. But it was quashed by the governor, who solemnly declared: "If English was good enough for Jesus ...Read more

At sunrise last Oct. 7, 20-year-old Natanel Haziz was enjoying a day off from service in the Israel Defense Forces, joining masses of other young Israelis dancing at the Nova Festival, an outdoor dance party in southern Israel, a few miles from Gaza. First came hundreds of Hamas rockets fired at Israeli civilian centers. Then suddenly there were...Read more

Bad debates happen, as Joe Biden's supporters say. But that wasn't a debate. Biden stood there in an apparent cloud of fatigue, while Donald Trump lied his way throughout, ignoring the uncomfortable questions, of which there were several.

Biden says he's staying in the race, and for Democrats, that should be that. Here's what his campaign ...Read more

The Supreme Court declined to issue a ruling in Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States. Instead, it sent the case back down to the lower courts where anti-abortion extremists will continue to fight to strip pregnant people of the basic right to emergency care, including when their life is at risk.

While the court's decision temporarily ...Read more

It was painful to watch. Two men vying for the most important job in the world. And neither of them making the cut.

Trump was Trump -- just as expected, bragging and blustering, lying and threatening, refusing to say he would accept the results of the election, defending the Jan. 6 rioters. It is no exaggeration to say he is a threat to our ...Read more

Serendipity plays such a starring role in our lives that we never stop to ask ourselves whether we ought to accept it. A random event, especially one that turns out to be your "big break," becomes a charming story -- even though, really, such happenstance is an indictment of a system that is no system at all.

Donald Sutherland, The New York ...Read more

The day we got our bloodhound puppy, Maggie, I looked at my husband and said, "We're going to have to say goodbye to her one day." Everyone who has ever loved a dog has felt this kind of anticipatory grief. We know that a special bond with a dog comes with an expiration date. Or does it?

There's a new book coming out in September by Cathryn ...Read more

It hasn't made it to my part of the urban Northeast yet, but the word "glizzy" has emerged as something you can call a hot dog.

It seems to have come from Washington, D.C., where the hard guys call a Glock pistol a glizzy. A hot dog is about the size of the extended magazine you use in a Glock pistol.

In the beginning was the gun, and the ...Read more

Jamaal Bowman's loss was the Democrats' gain. A member of the left-fringe Squad, his primary defeat removes at least one irritant to the Democrats' quest to take control of the House. And if his replacement with a moderate marks the beginning of the end for the Squad, well, bravo for the victor, Westchester County executive George Latimer.

...Read more

Things got violent outside a Los Angeles orthodox synagogue on Sunday, leading the mayor at a Monday press conference to say that a ban on wearing masks to such protests should be considered. A number of the pro-Palestinian protestors Sunday, who blocked entrance to the synagogue and ended up in fistfights and spraying Bear spray at those ...Read more

Chief Justice John Roberts, meet Roger Taney, your history big brother.

Abraham Lincoln despised Taney as the legal upholder of white supremacy but had to suffer being sworn in by the old Maryland scarecrow in 1861. In that fraught March moment, the dark past and bright future of America came face to face.

Lincoln defied Taney's trying to ...Read more

Here's a member of Congress with too much time on his hands ... and way too little of anything on his mind.

Rep. Greg Steube of Florida is a run-of-the-mill, extremist Republican specializing in such partisan slapstick as trying to nullify Joe Biden's election and install GOP loser, Donald Trump, as president.

But Steube went full-tilt ...Read more