OK, the U.S.A. departed the World Cup a few days ago. So who is America's team now?
I can't say, but I do have a good sense of who Atlanta's team is.
My wife wore her Holland shirt around town today and was stopped over and over by people who told her that they hope this year is the Netherlands' year.
Soccer is a beautiful game, but it can also be a cruel one, and who knows how the World Cup will turn out? Maybe today was as good as it gets for a fan of the Netherlands. Maybe, just maybe, another couple ...
Some years ago, I met the writer Barbara Kingsolver and talked with her for a half-hour.
I had read a couple of her early books and thought they were well done. In conversation, she was charming, engaging and genuine.
In the years since then, however, I confess that I haven't really kept up with her work. Oh, I've read the reviews, most of them very favorable, and some people who have read her books have told me how much they liked, even loved, them. But other books always seemed more pressing to read, and I never got around to Ms. Kingsolver's.
I was ...
The cerveza companies probably deserve the most credit, but Cinco de Mayo has become a sort of Mexican version of St. Patrick's Day in the United States.
Lots of folks gather to sip a Corona or, my favorite, Modelo Especial, or a margarita, eat spicy Mexican food, and generally celebrate all things Mexican.
It's not typically a day for deep thoughts, and its feel-good qualities don't necessarily carry over to debates about immigration law or fair treatment of Mexican workers in this country.
I'd like to mark the occasion, though, with a tribute to a Mexican-American, who was very important to my youth: ...
The late John Walter, then-managing editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, used to call me aside once in a while to talk about a story a reporter was working on. On several of those occasions — and describing several different individual reporters over the years — he would say, "There's a good (name withheld) and a bad (name withheld). Your job is to get the story out of the good (name withheld)."
"Name withheld" — referring to the person who was equally capable of doing very good or very bad work, in John's opinion — comes from me, not John, who rarely ...
In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I've been re-visiting some of the Irish items I live with every day. Here are 17 of them for the 17th of March:
1) A green-and-black rugby shirt from Delaney's, an Irish pub in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong. (Wanchai was the setting for "The World of Suzie Wong," but I never met her at Delaney's.)
2) An Irish flag. Just a small one. (A bigger one flies outside our house at St. Simons Island.)
3) A ceramic figurine depicting Durty Nelly's, a Bunratty pub that serves the best poached salmon I've ever eaten.
4) A pair ...
While a lot of publications are relentless downers, just telling folks about a lot of bad news, Like the Dew tries at least occasionally to say something uplifting.
Not long ago, for instance, we told you the wonderful news that the U.S. just might become the next France. We got the word from Mitt Romney and joie de vivre has been building ever since.
Once again, here goes: Some really great news.
Rush Limbaugh, who just might be our nation's consummate rightwing blowhard, said this on Tuesday about the pending health care legislation:
"I don't know. I'll just tell you this, if this passes ...
Oh, sure, he's a conservative.
But David Brooks is far from the most doctrinaire, and his columns in The New York Times are almost always readable.
As a writer and in his regular appearances on PBS's News Hour, Brooks comes across as a bright fellow who respects people with differing viewpoints and refrains from mean-spirited commentary. He also appears willing to challenge some of the orthodox faithful on his own side of the political spectrum. Unlike many modern-day conservatives, he rejects free-market fundamentalism and accepts the fact that government has a legitimate, even necessary, role to play. He just wants the appropriate ...
Like many people, I confess to a fair amount of skepticism about the possibility that democracy is going to blossom in Iraq or Afghanistan as a result of the military actions we've been engaged in for much of this decade.
That skepticism has not been erased. But I also confess to a certain amount of humility after reading Stephen Lee Myers' report on Sunday's election in Iraq.
No matter what else I might think about the election, I marveled at this paragraph:
"Iraqis defied a barrage of mortars, rockets and other bombs to show up to the polls in strength on Sunday, ...
Here's my choice for best quote of the day. It comes from David Axelrod, top aide to Barack Obama who is described by The New York Times in an article today as the president's "message maven:"
“Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”
A Washington Post column by the veteran political observer E.J. Dionne is already a bit dated but it still deserves to be widely read.
Published Monday, the column was written before Jim Bunning, a baseball pitcher turned Republican senator from Kentucky, abandoned his one-man stand against extending unemployment insurance. But it covers a lot of ground under the headline, "Living with partisanship."
I encourage everyone to read the whole column by clicking on this link. But even if you don't have the time or inclination, you might be interested in the most telling comment, explaining what Dionne sees as "the philosophical and ...
Like a lot of folks, I've spent much of the day watching the ongoing debate about health care in Washington. I'm not sure why I've been watching. Certainly there's not much drama in what passes for discussion in the nation's capital, and today's conversation, such as it was, has gone as everyone predicted it would.
Far more unpredictable, I thought, was a discussion at the St. Marys, Georgia, city council meeting the other night.
I read about it in the Georgia edition of the Jacksonville newspaper, the Florida Times-Union.
The topic? A recommendation by a consulting company that the city spell out "Saint" ...
Like so many people who feel great affection for the United States, I've been a little worried about it lately.
With the inauguration of Barack Obama in early 2009, the nation appeared on the verge of entering a new era of hope — one in which the U.S. would make progress toward living up to its ideals and once again be a shining beacon for the rest of the world.
Then Republicans put up a united front of naysaying and political grandstanding, Democrats responded with craven timidity and downright cowardice, and the era of hope quickly evaporated into an era of nope.
This ...
On a flight into Atlanta a few years ago — a journey I had made many times — I sat next to a young man from Dublin, who was on his first trip to the U.S. As the plane made its descent, the young Irishman stared intently out the window and marveled at what he saw.
"It's a city in a forest," he told me.
I loved his fresh perspective on the city I knew well, and he was right. Compared to many cities, Atlanta still does have wonderful trees, despite an onslaught by developers determined to knock them all down.
I thought ...
![DN! !!! [GOP Thanked by Taliban for Mosque Propaganda Goldmine - GOP is US Terror Threat #1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/oFxprzOeaF8/3.jpg)
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