Diamond-Cut Life

One of the old-fashioned customs that I’m a fan of, right up there with playing games at parties and going to church, is newsy Christmas letters. I love reading the stories of people’s lives, which is to say, the story of how people are living out their values.
We just received a good Christmas letter from [...]

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A 78 year old woman emailed Tom Brokaw yesterday to ask this question of  the two presidential candidates in last night’s debate (I’m paraphrasing):
“What sacrifices would you ask of the American people, given that we’re in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?”
John McCain replied that as president he would probably have to cut [...]

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I’m happy to see John Edwards’ endorsement of Barack Obama for president.
I had liked John Edwards very much as a presidential candidate, himself, and was sorry when he left the race in January. He was the only major candidate with the guts to talk about sacrifice (less consumption!) in the face of global warming, and [...]

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Bob Herbert’s column in the New York Times this morning questions whether racism in the U.S. has abated enough to elect our first black president. While I hope it has, I have a related but deeper concern.

This human race we all belong to, with all our different skin pigments, beliefs and so forth, is not the only game in town, i.e., on the planet. Think about it. All of this

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This Thursday evening my husband and I will participate in Focus The Nation, a nonpartisan teach-in and movement to address global warming that has been embraced by Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarznegger and more than 1,600 campuses nationwide.

This makes it the largest teach-in in our nation’s history, which I’d say is a right-sized strategy to deal with the largest problem we’ve ever faced.

Our friends Eban Goodstein, an

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