Last week was National Mental Illness Awareness week. I sat down at my laptop multiple times in an attempt to write a post for this site on the importance educating ourselves about mental illnesses, recognizing the early the warning signs, fostering a community in which people feel welcome and comfortable...

James Baldwin is one of my favorite writers, in part because anything and everything there is to say about race and racism in the United States he has already said and said it more eloquently and forcefully than any who came before or after him. But right now, in the...

The other day I watched the A&E program Beyond Scared Straight for the first time. I'm familiar with the original 1979 Academy Award winning documentary, Scared Straight!, that inspired many states across the country to institute similar programs in an attempt to deter juveniles already involved with the criminal justice...

The Great Depression earned its name, not just because of the severe economic depression experienced in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, but additionally because the national mood was one of prolonged sadness and despair. As the unemployment rate rose up to 25 percent, people simply lost hope...