“April is the cruelest month,” begins T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Waste Land.” Literal-minded folks living in Minnesota in January or Alabama in August might get a few chuckles from that line. Cruelty and chuckles aside, April is also National Poetry Month (NPM). Initiated in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, “National Poetry Month
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order recently calling for the dismantling of the Department of Education (ED), a process that will still require an act of Congress, leaving his critics aghast and hyperbolically claiming that he is trying to end education itself in America. In fact, he is trying to rescue it. “The experiment
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In January, my young friend Anna and I inventoried authors by gender on the “New Fiction” shelves of our public library. That count came to 123 novels and short story collections written by women, 64 authored by men. The disparity came as no thunderbolt to me, as I’d noticed for several years the number of
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Think DEI programs are on their way out the door? Think again. They seem to be alive and well, but not for women and minorities. This time they’re for men and boys. Reeling from their recent massive losses with the male sex, the Democratic Party is seeking to regain ground in this key demographic with
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“It was a wicked and wild wind/Blew down the doors to let me in,” goes the Coldplay song “Viva la Vida.” Released in 2008, it includes the reflections of a deposed king as he looks back on his reign, including the time mentioned above, the moment that he took power. The line always interested me
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Gallup just released its World Happiness Report and found – for the second year in a row – that the U.S. did not make the list of the top 20 happiest nations. Not many of us will be surprised by that result. In fact, we may even raise our hands and admit, “Yes, that’s me,
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