Hot

It’s as hot as Qatar, I was thinking as I crossed the street. Maybe. Kansas City in August can have heat as invasive and offensive as the Middle East. Not quite the dazzling temperatures, but the sticky air makes up the difference. I was remembering visiting my friend in Qatar– the first day I went […]

Deserved

This morning I read that Lindsey Graham was questioning the 14th amendment. Maybe being born here is not enough, he hinted. I don’t know what it means to be a citizen of this country. I just happened to be born here. It’s for convenience that we have this born-on-American-soil rule. For the convenience of the […]

Bugs

In our front yard, there’s an abandoned treehouse. I was going to the mailbox, and I looked past the ash tree, toward the treehouse. I never look that direction. The mailbox is, you know, business, and not pleasure, and also you don’t really look at the place you live. The treehouse is left over from […]

The Home of the Brave

Before the 1680s, a “bigot” referred specifically to a person intolerant of other religions. After that time, it expanded to intolerance of all sorts of things– other races and cultures, for example. The idea that there should not be a mosque near ground zero is covered before and after 1680. There is no good reason […]