Martin Levowitz

I spoke recently with someone who is famously unimpressed by our species’ progress toward wisdom and compassion. “Do you see any concrete evidence of progress?” I inquired. “Yes,” she said. “Dolls, band-aids, and emojis now come in different colors.” Some folks are blessed with lovely skin. Some not. We live in mixed-up times today, when […]

You’d be a fool, these days, to advocate for physical violence. There’s too damn much of it already, despite the enduring taboo. But, could it be that to renounce all violence, no matter what, is just as dumb as any rigid vow? The year was 1981. My toddler daughter, Rosie, and her hippy mother, Jan, […]

You have to sympathize with decent cops. Not only do they deal with danger every other day, they have to put up with the nut-jobs who detest authority, of whom there is no shortage nowadays. One problem pattern, nowadays, is this: The cop issues an order which the subject won’t obey. The situation escalates into […]

It seems like trolls and cyber-moles are everywhere, these days. Russian interference in our democracy is both worrisome and irritating. To subvert another country’s political process by propaganda, disinformation and divisive provocation is as dangerous, potentially, as outright military attack, though lots more furtive and oblique.  My wife and I used to visit Guatemala regularly, […]

Representative Ilhan Omar is outspoken; a woman; and a Muslim. Three strikes. She’s out. Omar receives beaucoup de flak for asserting that Zionism unduly influences U.S. foreign policy. She has only to open her mouth for kneejerk choruses of “anti-Semitism” to erupt. But much of what she says is clearly true. You’d have to be […]

I open the laptop and I check my email first. There’s not much there, besides the endless, ever-greater spam. So, next, as is my habit, I peruse the daily news. Today’s scandal du jour, it seems, is that some Southern governor was pictured in a yearbook photo, thirty years ago, in blackface, as a Hottentot […]

“I wish I could live until everyone is the same color,” I heard someone say last week. “A lovely sentiment,” I thought. “Don’t hold your breath.” Interbreeding may eventually homogenize the species, but that will not mean flawless harmony. Some of the most grueling rancor on earth occurs within families. Or am I being negative […]

This small, sweet town has been discovered – some might say invaded – by an army of prosperous tree-hugger types: retirees who’ve lately chosen this quaint place in which to spend their sunset years. They cherish peace and quiet, horses, hiking, biking, flora, fauna – all that wholesome, high-on-nature stuff. They breastfeed owls and worship […]