Browsing through old blogs, I found this seven-year-old blog (Dec 5, 2014) that seems to sum up my feelings today pretty well. Here, with some revisions, it is: I watch today’s protests and feel very old, very frustrated, and very discouraged. I watched the same explosions and protests in the 1950s, 1960s, and […]
I’ve been hard on identity politics and its role in polarizing the nation, so I want to be clear. Race is a critical issue for the country, and one that needs to be addressed. I understood and supported Martin Luther King and the peaceful protests of the Sixties Civil Rights movement of the […]
High time to take time out from spouting opinions and say thank you. Thank you to all who have read my blogs and read my books. Thank you to my daughter for her strength and caring. Thank you my writer friends, particularly my critique groups, past and present for the attention and care […]
Last week I talked about unlocking our brains from the media’s toxic fixation on the battle that goes nowhere and instead viewing the values of the two sides as differing in priorities, not in kind. If you’ve unstuck your brain now, take a moment to walk in the other fellow’s shoes—a longstanding habit […]
I pondered the title of this blog, then decided to leave it alone. Everyone will know what I mean. Strange, isn’t it? But I think the state of the country is on everyone’s mind. Which is good. It’s high time we stopped taking democracy for granted and give civics—the behavior necessary for the […]
I’m a writer. I believe in the power of language—for good and for evil. Words matter. In the last decade, the nation has been swept by masters of language, first to believe in itself, then to terror and rage at a huge and overwhelming enemy. […]
I once asked my writing class, which was attached to a course in communication, to identify themselves as Republican, Democrat, or Independent, group up, then write a description of their party—the values that united them. Then I asked them to write a description of what the other groups believed. When they were finished, they […]
If you grew up with Walt Kelly’s comic strip, Pogo, you know the image above became the icon of the age. Americans acknowledging the mess they’d made of the world. This is part of a strip published on Earth Day, 1971. Today we need another such image of the mess we’re making of our democracy. […]
In browsing through old blogs, I came across this “bogey” tale which seems particularly apt for today. Friend and author, Priscilla Long, who writes a fascinating column in the American Scholar, shares this story by author, Brian Doyle, on the origin of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Findings – Summer 2006 Findings: A Bogey Tale […]
As promised last week, here is the second part of the short story begun in last week’s blog—a writer’s view of the Sixties turmoil that, according to Ezra Klein and others, opened the split in the nation’s psyche. As I said before, these stories later became a part of my second novel, THE […]
After weeks of writing of the conflicts engulfing America, it’s time for an antidote. Though I think END OF THE RACE is a story of redemption, Leif Enger’s PEACE LIKE A RIVER is a powerful dose of good medicine. An elixir, like breathing deeply of enduring love. Rather than trying, and failing, to convey a […]
Are we all so caught up in mobocracy we can’t change course? Is hatred really so much fun?
Judith Kirscht lives and works in the beautiful Puget Sound area. She is the author of four published works of fiction with more to come soon!
