Morris: Downtown — A City’s Quandary
by Leo Morris Should we give up on “downtown” as a concept whose time has come and gone, admit that trying to keep it on life support is a futile effort? I don’t know the answer to that question. Perhaps there isn’t one, at least one that is knowable before a lot of other people Read the full article…
The Outstater
WHY IS A NICE FELLOW like Mike Pence so worked up over a former Soviet Republic 5,000 air miles away? Let’s start with the etymology. In the 1940s, the editor of the Tulsa Tribune, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, popularized for Americans “Afghanistanism,” a colloquialism originating in the British Parliament meaning concentrating on problems in distant parts while ignoring Read the full article…
Franke: The Importance of Faith-Based Hospitals
by Mark Franke If a group of people get together for the purpose of providing a needed social service for their fellow citizens, is this a good thing? Even if they are religious folk undertaking this work as an outward expression of their inward faith? Of course this is a good thing, isn’t it? The Read the full article…
Morris: Déjà Vu or a Full Brain?
by Leo Morris Most of you have undoubtedly experienced déjà vu, that eerie sense that something you have never encountered before is nonetheless somehow familiar. Most of you have undoubtedly experienced déjà vu, that eerie sense that something you have never encountered before is nonetheless somehow familiar. My apologies. I know that was just a cheap joke, Read the full article…
Franke: The Politics of Epithets, Name-Calling
by Mark Franke “O, wad some Power the giftie gie usTo see oursels as others see us!” This quotation from a poem by Robert Burns is clear even if written in a Scottish-English vernacular. He speaks to a universal human inadequacy — seeing ourselves from the other person’s point of view. This can be quite Read the full article…
The Outstater
If ‘Democracy’ Fails, Then What? THE WEEK BEGAN with my county chairman sounding the alarm that “democracy” will be at risk in 2024. “He keeps using that word but I do not think it means what he thinks it means,” to quote a meme of the great Inigo Montoya. Let me pair that with another popular meme, “The Constitution was Read the full article…
