Category: Uncategorized

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Progress never unfolds in a straight line. The colors and patterns of life, like tracking clouds from space, are too complex, too irregular, too imperfect to make sense much of the time. Once in awhile, though, a flawless aberration occurs, like the events last week in the United States and China. Pope Francis arrived in Washington and New York to issue a call to action on climate change and an appeal to …

BENZONIA, MI — The morning that two jetliners destroyed the World Trade Center 14 years ago today I was in Manistee, Michigan shopping for a new car. If you recognize, as I do, that among the primary Al Qaeda justifications for the attack was America’s late 20th century appetite for Mideast oil, and the meddlesome regional interest we displayed for securing our petroleum supply, then you might also consider that my search for an affordable …

BIRMINGHAM, Al. — The weekend before the pastor was assassinated and eight other African American adults were murdered in a church basement in Charleston, South Carolina, I spent the afternoon studying the exhibits at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The 23-year-old museum is a journey in photographs, videos, and artifacts of the dangerous struggle in the mid-20th century for justice, voting rights, and equality in Alabama’s largest city, and across the American South. A few …

SHILLONG, India — India’s National Green Tribunal, a judicial body with legal authority that ranks just below India’s Supreme Court, is quickly emerging as one of the world’s most important forums for the idea that economic advancement is tightly wired to public safety, and the security of water, air, and land. Established by India’s Supreme Court and legislated into existence and a source of funding by Parliament in 2010, the new court gained a formidable …