No Roar, No Drum

This time of year, because of events and anniversaries, personal and national, my thoughts often turn to heroism. I have debated the definition with more than one person, and keep neatly folded in one of my files a favorite Letter to the Editor I fired off in response to a column written by an editor […]

In Her Honor

There had been rumors, rustlings of something very bad afoot. Those with whom she had spent a lifetime, and shared in the most intimate of household experiences, from childbirth to preparing a departed loved one for burial, shoulder to shoulder, together through it all; those who once sought her out for help, comfort, and wisdom, […]

Brave Dave And The Draft Card

Forty-eight years ago yesterday, on October 15, 1965, twenty-four year old pacifist member of the Catholic Worker Movement, David J. Miller, stood on a sound truck near the Armed Forces Induction Center on Whitehall Street in Manhattan, and burned his draft card. He was arrested three days later, convicted of knowingly destroying and knowingly mutilating […]

Equality At The Sink

Standing at the kitchen sink tonight, I wondered how many dishes I have washed since my first sink full when I was six years old. That is sixty years of washing dirty dishes for a family; the thankless job no one likes, but still must be done by someone: the hapless kid whose turn it […]

Beyond My World

SOVIET FIRES EARTH SATELLITE INTO SPACE; IT IS CIRCLING THE GLOBE AT 18,000 M.P.H.; SPHERE TRACKED IN 4 CROSSINGS OVER U. S. Thus read the New York Times headline 56 years ago. On this day, October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched an artificial Earth Satellite into an elliptical low Earth orbit. Surprising everyone, it […]