The country is being torn apart by an alarming lack of trust in institutions and ourselves. At an event last week made up of mostly strangers, I witnessed, firsthand, the divide between the faithful and the faithless. Those who largely have faith in medical science and the faithless who don’t trust much of anything the government has to say. People...

This’ll be short but relevant, nonetheless. The country is mired in the deepest depression of spirit not seen in decades. So divided and rage-filled that it has spilled onto passenger flights from one end of the country to the other. We are a most imperfect union. The ’70s marked another time of anger and division: the Vietnam War, anti-war protests,...

Doomsurfing and doomscrolling . . .  [refer] to the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news . . . without the ability to stop or step back. — Merriam Webster Covid, political tribalism, uncertainty, distrust. Up late at night doomsurfing? The new obsession has become a default mechanism used by many to addictively scroll or surf through...

In 2005, I was speaking to a group of teachers, students, administrators and alumni at the Penn State Forum. During the Q&A that followed, one audience member asked, “if you only had five minutes to speak with the president of the United States, what would you tell him?” “Only five minutes?” I said. Even though I had not meant it...

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.  —Robert Kennedy Before a campaign appearance in Indianapolis, Indiana, Sen. Robert Kennedy had just learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.. The crowd he was planning to address had not yet...

Remembering 9/11, we tend to remember the whole event rather than the personal stories. More than 2,753 individuals died in New York City, Shanksville, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon that day. New York suffered the loss of 343 firefighters. One of them was 42-year veteran First Deputy Fire Commissioner William Feehan. It was reported that Feehan was so knowledgeable that he...

“How can we love our country and not love our countrymen? And loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory.” —Ronald Reagan Disinformation, disfunction, violence, a deadly virus, vaccination deniers, climate deniers, wildfires, hurricanes, floods....

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of character these days; the kind of character where individuals choose principle over expediency; who stand up for what’s right rather than give into fear or worse, silence. What we know of the Greek philosopher Socrates comes from his greatest student, Plato. Socrates believed that “to know the good is to do the...

“We cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first. We can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last.” – John F. Kennedy With all the turbulence in the world, it seems fitting that American’s are once again looking to the stars. Only this time, it’s through the eyes of citizen astronauts. I remember getting...

Why has Missouri Attorney General Attorney Eric Schmitt declined to release Lamar Johnson despite “overwhelming evidence of innocence”? Why has Kevin Strickland remained behind bars even though “the real killers pleaded guilty, and have already served their time for the murders”? Why has Missouri Governor Mike Parson declined to pardon either man? In an episode of the CBS news show,...