Good news: Trauma is not a death sentence. It may be a diagnosis, but not necessarily a prognosis. Trauma can launch personal transformation, post-traumatic growth. This helpful and hopeful message is especially good to hear now, when “traumatic” is invoked as a descriptor for so much current experience, whether justifiably…

I know, I know, this is ridiculous, this should not be the case: Conventional wisdom tells us that, as we get older, life becomes a slog — an unhappy, lonely, increasingly pointless slog. …

I start with a leading question: Is Elon Musk’s disruptor “leadership” model any way to run a company, much less a country? Elon Musk may be an entrepreneurial genius: He is co-founder of the electronic payment firm PayPal; an early investor and CEO of the electric car company Tesla; and…

Twenty-fifth in an ongoing series, Notes from a Plague-Time How fortunate America was to have, in its gravest public health crisis in a century, a guide of the skill and stature of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci. Serving since 1984 as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases…

Once again, the World Cup — soccer’s quadrennial battle royal — gave a troubled and weary world more than enough dazzling athleticism to marvel at, demonstrating once again what feats of physical skill some who walk among us can deliver. …

Hope springs: Strong-man rule got punched in the nose in late 2022. The world-wide trend toward autocracy and away from democracy and human rights has been paused. How so? And for how long? In the U.S., proto-autocrat Donald Trump came up a loser, big-time, when candidates spouting his absurd rigged…

Twenty-fourth in an ongoing series, Notes from a Plague-Time “Everybody will get it.” By now, deep into the third year of the COVID pandemic, we all know what is meant by “it”: “It” is the coronavirus that ignited a public health crisis worldwide. And the “everybody” who will get “it”…

Did America just break its MAGA fever? Did American voters in this historic midterm election just save American democracy from election-denying anti-democrats espousing violence? Did America just yank itself off the path to fascism? As the shock recedes and sense can be made, it seems, yes: American voters have indeed…

Fourth in a special series, Midterm Alerts Dear Independent or Undecided Voter: So, the midterm elections are next Tuesday, November 8. …