Commentary

On Friday, we honor our nation’s veterans, a practice that goes back more than a hundred years to the end of the first world war. Politicians from Baltimore to Honolulu will make rousing speeches, as generations of politicians have done before them. As a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’m grateful that they value our service, but I think we can do better than empty rhetoric. When the U.S. government ended the draft in 1973 and adopted the all-volunteer force military model, it effectively segregated the armed forces from the rest of the country. Today, veterans account for only 7% of the U.S. adult population, meaning most Americans probably don’t know anyone with military experience.

Our conversations began in the summer of 2016, a few months before Donald Trump was elected president. A friend who worked in IT at a Fortune 500 company said he wanted to start monthly breakfasts to talk politics, sports and current events. I joined Joe, the IT manager, and Jon, an EPA lawyer. We were neighbors with center-left political leanings, but all of us had voted across the aisle on occasion. Over the past six years, the group has grown in unexpected ways and moved well beyond the realm of a typical coffee klatch. Although two early members have moved away, we now meet weekly for lunch and, at the suggestion of Joe, our founder, the group now spans much of the U.S. political and geographical spectrum.

I recently took my 11-year-old minivan in for an oil change and asked the mechanic to please turn off all the idiot lights on the dashboard because the reddish glare was becoming quite annoying. Imagine my surprise when I got a call sometime later from the same fellow with the news that they could put the vehicle in fine working order for $3,250. I assumed I had misheard. Who pays that kind of money to repair something that hadn’t actually been in a crash? “You mean $32.50? or maybe $325.00?” No, the caller patiently explained. He then went on to list all that was wrong with the van. I think he mentioned axles or steering or possibly struts. I think there were bald tires and some kind of leak as well. (Frankly, I had kind of mentally tuned out at that point. Where was I going to come up with that kind of money?

Last January, I had but one resolution for the new year: to finish my novel. Now it’s November, with more months of the year behind me than to come — and that thing is still not done. So is it OK to just call it a loss and binge “Murder, She Wrote” episodes until Dec. 31 and then start over? Or at least pretend I’m going to? “We don’t have to wait until the New Year,” said Larisa Harrington of Strong By Nature, a New Market, Maryland-based coaching business that counsels clients and organizations on mindfulness, emotional intelligence, burnout, recovery and more. I have 58 days left this year to reach my goal. Harrington and Tekemia Dorsey, of Middle River, whose company, DTD Enterprises, specializes in training, both have advice for helping me, and anyone else, make the last days of the year count. These tips aren’t to stress you out, or make you feel bad, but more of a gentle redirection.

The future of plant-based meat was supposed to be cooked to perfection. In recent years, corporate and venture capital funds poured into the space. Fast-food giants such as KFC and Burger King raced to roll out offerings. The meme stock crowd rallied around Beyond Meat. Sales were growing. It would appeal to vegans missing meat! Even better, it would find a following with meat-eaters looking to cut back! It’s now clear that the hype got ahead of a sometimes less than tasty reality. Sales of plant-based meats in the United States are down by more than 10 percent from this time last year. The issue is basic: The problems fake meat were meant to solve — from the climate impact of industrial farming to the health impacts of meat — are all too real, but the solution it offers appeals to far fewer consumers than expected.

NASA announced last month that its new panel to study unidentified aerial phenomena — i.e. UFOs — was staffed up and ready to get working. The panel is impressive, including planetary scientists, astrophysicists, experts from the Federal Aviation Administration, data scientists and a celebrated astronaut. I have worked with a few of these scientists, and the group represents a stellar collection (pun intended) of smart, creative people with high scientific integrity. But what, exactly, are these scientists supposed to be doing in the contentious domain of UFOs? More importantly, is this really something that NASA should give time and money, potentially risking the agency’s credibility?

I purchased my first newspaper at the behest of my father at the age of 6. The newspaper was the New York Daily News, known as the paper of the working man. At the time, the early 1950s, there was an astonishing array of newspapers covering the entire range of political sentiment, including foreign language publications that served ethnic and immigrant communities. Record-breaking union bargaining agreements in the 1960s led to the demise of a number of daily newspapers. It was the beginning of a trend that continues today. Two significant changes have been the loss of afternoon newspapers (no one at home to read them) and two-newspaper cities. For those readers who wish to condemn unions for destroying daily journalism, readers should know that the average pay for an entry-level newspaper reporter and editor in 1953 was around $60 a week in major cities and less elsewhere.