Commentary

Harry Calloway was a hugger, and he came at me suddenly while I was trying to take notes on a summer day in 2005. He wrapped his big arms around me outside Saint Benedict’s Church on Wilkens Avenue, and I could feel his earnestness, his gratitude, his elation that strangers were trying to show him the way out of wickedness.

As students begin another schoolyear throughout the United States, a troubling trend is taking shape. Political leaders, seemingly hostile to complete and accurate history, are determined to shape lesson plans in line with their own agendas, at the expense of the truth. This summer we saw shocking commentary from Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, defending a proposed school curriculum that watered down the horrors of slavery.

The Washington region just had its most intense September heat wave on record, and climate disasters fill our news media. If you’re looking to turn your anxiety into productive and empowering action, there are many effective local- and state-level opportunities that Washington region residents can tap into. This post provides a list of action opportunities rooted in the fact that making our cities, suburbs, and towns more livable, inclusive, and vibrant is one necessary area of climate action.

Today marks Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, an urgent reminder that we need to do everything we can to protect pregnant people and children, including undocumented mothers and their unborn babies. A new policy solution gives this often-overlooked part of the population hope. Last year, Maryland enacted a new law — the Healthy Babies Equity Act — that provides comprehensive health care coverage to pregnant people regardless of immigration status.

What was it that Joseph Campbell said? “Follow your bliss.” It became a catchphrase in the 1990s after Campbell, the author and mythologist, gave an interview to Bill Moyers on PBS. “If you follow your bliss,” Campbell said, “you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris confuses the heck out of me.b Most of the time I hardly think about the conservative Republican from Cambridge. He represents Maryland’s 1st District in Congress, which covers the nine counties of the Eastern Shore, plus Harford County and part of Baltimore County. But now, he’s become someone to watch.