*Note: This essay was published in the Los Angeles Times print edition on October 17, 2021. Images from the actual print story, as well as text can be found below; it can also be found online here and PDF of the print version can be found here. I had fired every bullet and it wasn’t enough. On a black…
*Note: This essay was published in the Los Angeles Times print edition on December 22, 2020. Images from the actual print story, as well as text can be found below; it can also be found online here. Our Christmas tree has a knee. “A crooked tree for a crooked year” was my sales pitch when we spotted the bent…
*Note: This essay was published in the Los Angeles Times print edition on August 2, 2019. Images from the actual print story, as well as text can be found below; it can also be found online here (and a PDF version as well). Tulsi Gabbard highlights a problem that is not unique to her. She has two…
*Note: This essay was published in the Los Angeles Times print edition on February 15, 2019. It can also be found online here. A century ago, on Feb. 17, 1919, the U.S. Army’s 369th Infantry Regiment, nearly 3,000 African American soldiers and known as the Harlem Hellfighters, returned from World War I and marched up Fifth Avenue…
*Note: This essay was published in the Los Angeles Times print edition on December 24, 2018, under the title “If only in their dreams.” It can also be found online here. Bing Crosby will forever remind me of a giant Latino sergeant I served with in the Army on my first deployment to Iraq in 2003. A…
*Note: This essay was published in the Los Angeles Times print edition on May 28, 2018. It can also be found online here. The novelist Margaret Atwood recently caused a stir when, during an interview with Variety, she said that the 9/11 hijackers “got the idea” to fly planes into buildings from watching “Star Wars.” Atwood, the…