Once upon a time, in the country many of us call our own, the government incarcerated American citizens in concentration camps solely because of the country of their ancestors’ birth.  The United States was then at war with Japan, having been attacked (Pearl Harbor) by that country in December of 1941.               In 1942, American citizens […]

              I can still recall the different kind of fire drills we would occasionally have when I was a second- or third-grade student.  Our principal would announce that we were to practice what we were supposed to do if a nuclear bomb was exploded in our neighborhood.  Actually, the “in our neighborhood” part wasn’t part […]

Capital Stage, the city’s cutting-edge theater company, opened its 13th season earlier this month with one of the best productions of a great play I have ever seen (and in my 70 years I’ve seen a lot of great plays).  The play is “An Octoroon,” and it is such a profoundly important play (Obie Award […]

              Where were you when you first learned that Princess Diana had died?  How about when you became aware of the 9/11 attacks?  The anniversaries of both events (Diana’s death occurred on August 31, 1997; the 9/11 attacks took place in 2001) have been the subject of no small amount of commentary of late, much […]