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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. It was always going to be a tough mid-term election, based on history. Only in 1934 and 2002 did a first-term President’s party not suffer Congressional losses.  In those two cases, the public rallied to an existential crisis,…

On October 6, 2022, the Coalition for a Better Acre celebrated its 40th anniversary with a gala event at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. The CBA started as a grassroots organization determined to save the neighborhood from an urban renewal plan that would have displaced hundreds. The CBA succeeded and has…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The critically important Pennsylvania Senate race between Lt. Governor John Fetterman and TV celebrity Mehmet Oz – whom Oprah Winfrey used to call “America’s Doctor – is too close to call. Winfrey gave Oz his big break. He…

This essay originally appeared in the Boston Globe Ideas section on Sunday, October 23, 2022, and on bostonglobe.com on October 19.     October Dreaming By David Daniel October is a month of mystic meanings. Of marigolds and wild asters and the ripe honey scent of Concord grapes on the…

In 2006 I wrote the following WUML Sunrise essay.  It was inspired by a Cold War relic discovered while browsing through a salvage/antique shop. The nuclear survival guide, “Protection in the Nuclear Age”, struck me as quaint and out-of-date given that we were in a relatively warmer era with no…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Several years back, I was driving west on Route 9 in Wellesley. While stopped in the passing lane at a red light, my car was hit from behind. Since the light was still red, I got out to…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. See Marjorie’s “Autumn books Part 1” Factfulness by Hans Rosling was recommended by friends Catherine and Dana at a summertime brunch. They urged the book as an antidote to our discussion about the dystopian world situation. The book reveals…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris is an amazing debut novel by a 29-year-old man about racial and social tensions in the deep South in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.  Harris’ prose is luscious; his characters are…

The entry below is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Ron DeSantis has had quite a summer. Running for re-election in 2022, positioning himself for a 2024 run for President, Florida’s Republican governor has been trolling Democrats, whipping up culture wars, cruelly using asylum-seeking Venezuelans as campaign props,…

The entry below is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. It felt a little like my gasp when Hillary uttered the term “deplorables” to describe Trump supporters. That meant trouble ahead. Biden’s poorly qualified assertion that the pandemic is over may not have been quite that explosive. But it was a…