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“Is this heaven?” Shoeless Joe Jackson asks Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams. I’ve always loved that line. Growing up on an Iowa farm, we had our own ball field behind our house. My dad built a backstop for my brothers and me long before Kevin Costner ever heard “The Voice.” On summer evenings, Dad would
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Chain, chain, chain (Chain, chain, chain) Chain of fools So ran the chorus to Aretha Franklin’s 1967 hit song “Chain of Fools.” One hundred twenty years earlier, the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proclaimed: “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!” The chains of Franklin’s song
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Fear. Nervousness. Anxiety. If you are lucky enough to avoid these feelings dominating your person right now and turning a few more hairs gray, then you can likely still smell them in the air and see them in the actions of those around you. It doesn’t matter which political party people align themselves with. Liberals’
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Early reports from January painted a grim picture about just how deadly the coronavirus was. Initially, the World Health Organization estimated that the percentage of infected individuals who die from COVID-19 was 3.4 percent. That statistic is called the infection fatality rate (IFR) – or colloquially, the death rate – and means that for every
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When the Civil War interrupts the Christmas plans of the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women, the four lament their reduced prospects for a happy holiday. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” Jo says. Many of us likely feel similarly to Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy as we reach the end of
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In an increasing online world, people are lonelier than ever, especially men. In a 2021 study, 15 percent of men reported having no close friends, up from only three percent in the early 1990s. Perhaps more alarmingly, 28 percent of young men (under 30 years old) reported not having any close social connections. As a
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