The story of a boy and his first car — I still remember the day I first saw it. It was the summer of 1974 and I was working at a resort cleaning cottages. The resort was about five miles out of town, and I had to ride my bike there to get to work. One day while we were…

What waits for you on the distant horizon — There are few jobs where the passage of time is as noticeable as teaching, especially if you stay in the same town or school for your entire career. When I began my career in 1987, I could not possibly have imagined the changes I would witness as my career progressed. …

Is all police brutality against Blacks racist? — The recent killing of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police officers provides still another opportunity for us to discuss race relations in this country, the relationship between police departments and communities of color, and the behavior of our police departments as a whole. As if we haven’t had enough opportunities already. …

A journey through a time long ago and far away…. — I was born in 1958, and the older I get, the more I feel like I grew up in the stone age. So many things we take for granted now didn’t exist when I was a kid. …

Stories of everyday heroism and love — There is an old saying that you shouldn’t meet your heroes. The reasoning behind that, of course, is that we tend to put our heroes on pedestals and hold them to an imaginary standard they can never uphold in real life. The stories that follow about not about heroes that…

Our reactions tell us that all are not created equal — The human body is a noisy contraption. There is almost always some kind of sound coming from it. Some of the noises are voluntary, while others are less so. What is particularly interesting to me, however, are the reactions people have to the various noises the human body makes. Take…

White America has been shaken from its nap — Most of the older white people I know are racist. The problem is that they don’t know it. They aren’t mean, and they don’t openly burn crosses or use racial epithets. They aren’t members of the Proud Boys or the KKK. …

You might hate America and not even know it — Whenever someone brings up an unpleasant or inconvenient fact about what the United States is doing or has done, it is not unusual to hear conservatives say that person “hates America.” You will read it in conservative newspapers and blogs and hear it on conservative talk radio and television shows…

It has been an exhausting journey — I’ve spent a good deal of my life learning things that are of no use to me anymore. …