We have to make a decision as a culture and as a collection of human beings. With our fancy phones, the world media and Internet, we have developed a means of disseminating information with immediacy only imagined before. We have created a platform where very real monsters, warped people who

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On the day before Thanksgiving in 1996 while walking home from school, my then 7-year-old daughter was stopped by a 31-year-old man. He opened the car door and forcibly pulled the child inside. He kidnapped her. This was near three in the afternoon. As he sped off, my oldest daughter ran home

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I am a retired teacher and the mass shooting in Newtown CT today hit me very hard. My prior career was as a Navy Aircrewman and at times while a taught I felt I was safer in the air than in a school. I had a hard time watching the news reports and finally I […]

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Dear friends who can’t tolerate anyone bringing up gun control: You’re not going to intimidate me with your !!!!s, ????s, WORDS IN ALL CAPS, namecalling, and threats to unfriend. I am going to speak my mind regardless of your protestations. I just wish you loved the First Amendment

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The 2012 US election will be remembered as one of the polarized in modern times. The rhetoric was fiery and the emotions were high, but just how divided are we really? Listen to some of Virginia voters we met the day before the election at the Romney rally held at George

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I’m Pat Hall, I’m 66 years old, retired and very busy. My husband is a retired Vietnam Vet. We’ve been married for 24 years and have a blended family, three daughters, one son, and 12.8 grandchildren. We share similar views, definitely don’t always agree on issues and love to debate. I think I

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I just launched a crowd-funding campaign for my new project Story of America: A Nation Divided. Our goal is to raise a thousand dollars per day for 60 days.  I have great faith in the power of storytelling and dialogue. They offer opportunities to understand one another, heal wounds and create

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“History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.” –JFK      It is the year 1990. I am living in a small town called Indiantown, Florida. A son born to immigrants who came to the US from […]

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This country was built on a DREAM: a dream of freedom, of opportunity, the belief that if you put in the hard work you could become anything you wanted to be, that you could achieve anything. It was that dream that inspired waves of migration and brought so many to build railroads and work the

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To be an African American in the United States of America today is a duality that’s fulfilling, enjoyable, painful, and infuriating at various points in one’s life and, at times, simultaneously. The fulfilling part of being Black and an American is realizing that this is the greatest country in

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