America is the Fyre Festival of countries. It is pure hype with little to no positive results. It is a back-alley drug deal culminating in a sweaty palm gripping a wrinkled bag of oregano. It is broken promises, shattered dreams, and shameful regret. All our lives we are told with…

A work of fiction — Many years ago, I visited a museum exhibiting the work of Mark Lombardi, a conceptual artist who researched “the political and social terrain” that surrounded him. Over the course of several years, Lombardi mapped his findings in an aesthetic manner, constructing unique visual representations of complex financial transactions involving war…

About a year ago, after I had been posting more content to my Instagram business account, I noticed I was consistently gaining followers. I felt I had achieved a milestone at 1,000 followers, but the audience just kept increasing — sometimes by as many as 50 or 100 followers per…

A lot has happened during the last year. There was an unprecedented global pandemic that is still raging out of control in parts of the world. A man named George Floyd was murdered. If Floyd had been born white, he would likely still be alive. A massive protest movement erupted…

An op-ed by Jason Horowitz headlined “Stop Calling Israel Apartheid” appeared in the Times of Israel blog section today. This is my response. While discussing the recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report concluding that Israeli policy constitutes the crime of apartheid, Jason Horowitz never articulates a strong personal position on…

A work of fiction in which each sentence begins with a sequential letter of the alphabet — Audrey was despondent. Better days had come and gone, and this formerly lighthearted service industry worker had developed a bleak outlook. Cinnamon and ginger filled the air — scents that were known to please most patrons, but not her — not anymore. During her break, Audrey contemplated the dreams she…

White discomfort is a necessary component in our effort to defend Black lives — *While this is a true account, pseudonyms and small fictionalizations were used to protect the identities of the subjects described herein. I only recently unearthed dormant childhood memories of my Aunt Karen referring to Brazil nuts as “n***** toes.” She said it a number of times over the course of…

A pleasant surprise arrived on the annual stoner holiday known simply as 4/20. After a tumultuous year of monumental protests during the deadliest pandemic in recent history, a verdict on the Derek Chauvin case was finally reached. As CNN reported, “Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin has been convicted on…