During life’s most difficult times, we can discover redemption through creation. — Mark McGann, a modest and scholarly chaplain, represented a California hospice that took care of my sister, Julie. He gathered my family around a dining room table. Speaking in a calm voice, almost a whisper, he asked us, “Is there value in suffering?” Our wife-mother-sister-grandmother was dying in the master…

Before the 1954 Supreme Court Brown decision, racial segregation was common in American schools, as was this policy in Topeka, Kansas, epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement. — Throughout the first half of the 20th century, public school boards forced African-American children to attend disparate schools encumbered by substandard facilities and located long distances from their homes, although white-only schools were nearby.

The beleaguered artist suffered more failure by age 37 than most people experience in a long life. — Waking from a fitful dream, he struggled out of bed and stumbled to a barred window. From this perspective in the asylum, he beheld a clear night, a large morning star enchanting him. The sight of stars always inspired him. …

This is a true story about a male construction worker who wanted to become a woman, while expecting the government to pay for her surgeries — in 1975. A trailblazing trans who braved derision and judgment to help change the world. — “Married?” “Second time. Two kids … one grown, one still in high school.” “I see you didn’t finish high school.” “High school? I picked too many fights,” Bruce said. “If a guy looked at me wrong, I’d kick his butt. Sometimes I’d take on two or three at once. …

The first sentence in a pamphlet produced by Suncoast Hospice riveted my attention: “Life is a journey from beginning to end, measured not in time but in quality.” This legendary nonprofit is an authority on death and dying, the largest hospice in the United States based in Clearwater, Florida. With…

Are we merely insignificant specks of life? In a cosmological context, that’s a matter of perspective. — The August sun burned our necks as we helped my grandfather with his wheat harvest. After sunset, my cousin and I would shower and consume huge plates of farm food. We would then retreat to the roof of a root cellar. About the size of a car, the roof was…

How social insurance for old age might become market driven and not a guarantee. — In a one-sided editorial argument lambasting “old-age benefits,” Denver Post editorial writer Chuck Plunkett employed the metaphor of a sinking Titanic. The ship’s designer recognized that too many watertight chambers had been breached by an iceberg and that the ship would sink: “a mathematical certainty.” This vivid analogy buttressed Plunkett’s…

How A Twelve-Year-Old Girl Ventriloquist Gave Hope to A Dying Man — Herbert I. Jacobson, my robust and energetic next-door neighbor, had turned 86 nine months earlier. He looked and seemed to be in his sixties rather than shooting for the tenth decade of life. He never once needed hospitalization, but in May he became dehydrated and required hospital care. After being…

Prominent academics and sociologists have written a letter to Pew Research Center, demanding that the company stop researching “generations.” These sociologists lack understanding of generational marketing. — Louis Menand, a staff writer at The New Yorker and professor with Harvard University, wrote a combative article entitled: It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations.” His subtitle then draws a line in the sand: From Boomers to Zoomers, the concept gets social history all wrong.