SCATTERED LIGHT Second book in the Mary Donahue Chronicles, and sequel to the award-winning YA novel, WINTER LIGHT. When 36-year-old attorney Mary Donahue of Chicago meets the surprising man of her dr...

SCATTERED LIGHT Second book in the Mary Donahue Chronicles, and sequel to the award-winning YA novel, WINTER LIGHT. When 36-year-old attorney Mary Donahue of Chicago meets the surprising man of her dr...

Elaina Battista-Parsons’ CHOMP, PRESS, PULL fully immersed me into the life of someone whose senses go off like fireworks!The author talks about growing up in New Jersey with sensory dysfunction befor...

I was at a farmer’s market recently handing out information about an upcoming election in my state. A man passed by and I asked if he knew about the various issues at hand. He threw up his hands and smiled. “I stopped voting when I was 63,” he said. “I’m 83 now and feeling fine.” I appreciated the brief exchange, because I’ve always wondered why people don’t vote and he gave me a very good reason: his strategy protects his mental health to an apparently significant degree. While his tactic would do the opposite for me by increasing my stress — that my lack of involvement and those of others, deterred a better outcome — the exchange encouraged me to take a closer look at why people don’t vote.

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, a friend sent me a social media video. I’m glad she did. I was able to send her a fact-checking article published by the Associated Press, “FACT FOCUS: Assassination of Charlie Kirk prompts flood of false and misleading claims online," that dispelled the premise of the video, which had been edited by conflict entrepreneurs for the purpose of inciting rage toward people of the opposite political viewpoint. The interaction reiterated two truths about our times: All social media videos, posts and articles that leave viewers mad at “others” are the work of conflict entrepreneurs and ideally should be dismissed without reading, commenting on or sharing.

I recently attended “Dignity Over Violence: A Unified Civic Response,” an online Braver Angels panel discussion about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the growing political violence in America. The event — attended by 1400 Americans — was hosted by Maury Giles, the new CEO of the national nonpartisan organization dedicated to depolarization and civil discussion. The event included twelve speakers from a variety of other bridge-building organizations such as BridgeUSA and CommonSense American. The program addressed the need for all Americans to stand up to say that political violence is unacceptable.

About six months ago someone told me about Derate the Hate, a podcast hosted by Minnesota conservative, Wilk Wilkinson. One episode and I was hooked on his calm demeanor and fierce belief in the ability of all of us to change for the better, especially when it comes to unhooking from negative messaging in order to talk to one another at a time when unity is scare, but increasingly important. Wilk's journey from adversity to success in his career, marriage, and parenting exemplifies the transformative power of perseverance and self-improvement.

I live in California, so my state’s fight with Texas’ mid-census redrawing of voting districts, known as gerrymandering, in order to gain more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives is an issue that’s only growing bigger. I didn’t really learn about the practice until I read a Harper’s Magazine article in the early 2000s. I remember wondering how gerrymandering could be legal. The system sounded like an absolute usurping of citizen representation. I assume most of us agree that the voting district boundaries where we live should reflect already-established geographical locations, such as counties, towns or rural areas.

RepublicEN is a conversative climate change advocacy org that thinks it has a solution. Will Republicans listen?

View the interview on the Vigilant Positivity YouTube channel. This month’s Citizen Spotlight shines a light on Swati Srivastava who says that to unite the “exhausted majority” of Americans who crave unity, kindness and sanity, we need to narrate a new story of hope. A software engineer turned independent writer, voice-over artist, and filmmaker, Swati is the head of Tired and Beat Up Productions. Two years ago, she established the Long Island chapter of Crossing Party Lines, a common ground movement organization that fosters civil discussion among people with differing viewpoints.

President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and takeover of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department after a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee was carjacked in the city got me to wondering three things: Which are the highest crime rate cities per capita? Which of the cities have experienced a drop in crime? Why would the president get involved in city crime rates? Crime rate per 100,00 people Total crime rate The following comes from the FBI Uniform Crime Rate data for 2023 (cities with populations over 50,000):

I recently attended one of six online meetings held by the new Braver Angels CEO, Maury Giles, in which he sought feedback from members about how the organization should move forward. In the past, the task of asking questions and receiving responses would be no small task, especially when you consider 150 people attended the online meeting. If each of us had received two minutes to answer one question, the meeting would have been five hours long. Then the BA staff would have had to take notes, collate, store and analyze them: easily a week’s worth of staff time.

One of the first things that struck me when reading “Beyond the Politics of Contempt” (due out in September) was the authors' fervent urging that Americans return to kindness. That if we can accomplish the feat of reminding ourselves that we’re good people, and those who have a different political perspective, are good people, a lot of the political polarization we’re experiencing will diminish and everything else will fall into place. Namely, we'll build relationships, find common ground and take action to solve the problems our country faces, whether at the local, state or federal level.

Code wording is when we use specific words or phrases that contain hidden meanings to those in our inner circles to convey information discreetly. The funniest example I can think of is that before menstruation could be talked about in public, I and other girls and women would say things like, “I just got my monthly bill,” or “my friend just arrived,” both said with a dose of sarcasm, but that hit its mark by bonding us in shared understanding. I don’t know when I became conscious of political code wording, only that it seeped into my life starting in the 1990s.

“Heartbreakingly real... a unique literary triumph.” Byddi Lee, author of Barren When 36-year-old attorney Mary Donahue of Chicago meets the surprising man of her dreams, she discovers that to love is...

by Sherian LeeWell-organized, well-written, kind and hopeful, Sherian Lee, the author of this remarkable book does a fabulous job of talking directly to all of us about a simple truth: we do not have ...

website: (May 2, 2025) Do you believe America can be saved from partisan divisiveness and policies that swing wildly in both directions, depending on who’s president? Richard Harwood does, and as he states in “A New Civic Path,” he believes the answer lies in building the kind of belief and trust in our communities that can help lead to the concrete change necessary to draw us together and make our lives better. Rather than be a step-by-step manual, the book adheres to its stated claim of being a manifesto, meaning “a public declaration of policy and aims.”

If you talk to many of us Americans, we’ll tell you we no longer feel comfortable in either political party. Many of us would prefer a third party or multiple parties. Yet America just turned 249 years old and in all of that time, no third party has been able to gain a significant toehold with voters. Elon Musk provides the most recent example of that conundrum. Despite spending almost $300 million in the 2024 election to get Donald Trump elected, and despite being given a prominent role in disrupting the government through…

By Jim ZervanosOur culture is so full of memes — especially about American high school students as being any number of negative things: lazy, spoiled, distracted — that I loved reading about the real ...