14 May, 2022
Calling in virtue
I am an academic, with publications in peer-reviewed journals and a terminal degree.
14 May, 2022
8 May, 2022
Mothers arise!
It's Mother’s Day. Roses, dinner out so Mom doesn't have to cook. A nice Hallmark card. And that sentimental gift that oozes romance, a new Hamilton Beach Innovative Alexa Enabled Coffee Maker. Gosh.
29 Apr, 2022
May Day!
It's May Day, a day loved and hated by many. It's ancient, a pagan celebration of what was regarded as the first day of summer, focusing on flowers, Aphrodite, and Dionysus. In other words, a balling good time for all. Who wouldn't love such a day, even if the Puritans hated it?
18 Apr, 2022
Happy Tax Day
Yes, it's That Day. Show of hands--who loves paying their federal taxes? No one? OK, let's hear why not. Warning: I'm going to fact-check you.
3 Apr, 2022
MIC v Earth
Imagine a tank, a massively tough, nearly impenetrable machine designed to roll over most anything, take almost any gunfire, but it’s lost control on El Capitan in Yosemite and plunges over the cliff edge going fast enough to clear a freefall 3,000 feet to the valley below, a crash that snaps the machine, destroying it and tragically killing all four crew members and any wildlife at the impact site.
22 Mar, 2022
Freedom, our brains on social media, disinformation, WMD, Nazis
Each human on Earth seems to have a social media identity as unique as a fingerprint, so we all see what the cybergods algorithmically feed us.
7 Mar, 2022
Saving Ukraine, saving lives, saving ourselves
I teach nonviolence. Students ask, so, okay, and just how could Ukraine possibly resist Putin and a brutal invasion using nothing but nonviolence?
20 Feb, 2022
Not your champion
Donald Trump is no more your savior than Hitler was Germany’s savior. Regain your consciousness.
30 Jan, 2022
Russians
Vladimir Putin is not Russia and he is not “the Russians.” Some say Biden is right in amassing troops in Eastern Europe in support of NATO countries there, pursuant to Russian aggression on the Ukraine border.
25 Jan, 2022
Integrity MIA
If you look at how polls and politics are shaping up, it is shamefully obvious that Republicans, in general, simply do not represent what most Americans say they want.
15 Dec, 2021
Defenseless
Defenseless by Tom H. Hastings 414 words Come on, Senators. First you haggle endlessly over a “human infrastructure” bill (Build...
10 Dec, 2021
OMG WTF
I grew up in canoe country, becoming a guide in the Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness as a young man...
4 Dec, 2021
Critical race—to the bottom
My people came to the US in a wave of late 19th century immigration that was fueled by the trauma of endless wars in Europe...
6 Nov, 2021
Vote back better
My Dad skated for the Minnesota Gophers hockey team after he finally got done serving “for the duration” in World War II in the Philippines. So, of course, he was our coach as we PeeWees tried to learn to play hockey in Minnesota in the late 1950s. As a coach, one of his favorite go-to instructions to us was, “OK, team, back to the basics!”...
27 Oct, 2021
Laundered legacies
When Richard Nixon died, those of us on the antiwar side of the barricades during his misbegotten presidency were driven to new lows of cynical despair by the image-washing...