The Faces of Protest

This post originally appeared on Murder Is Everywhere. I regret to interrupt my regularly scheduled post—which was going to be food-related, alas!—because my life keeps getting interrupted. Just like my nation’s standard operating procedure. These days, my writing schedule seems divided between fiction and emails to senators, congressmen, and activist friends. And I’ve been on … Read more

Nonviolence is Everywhere

This post originally appeared on Murder Is Everywhere. Last weekend I stood with forty women and a few good men in a training maneuver called a “Hassle Line.” We’d just enough time to share our names before we began playing our roles. My partner in the opposing line, a social work student named Faye, played … Read more

An Unsolved Death in Baltimore

This post originally appeared on Murder Is Everywhere. The Vidocq Society is a small but legendary group of experts who gather to solve mysteries of the ages. I wish they could find the answer to an unexplained death that took place a few miles from me, last spring. This is the death of 25-year-old named … Read more

Year of the Journalist

This post originally appeared on Murder Is Everywhere. People routinely denigrate the press for spreading falsehoods and looking for scandal. In recent years, many have traded in newspaper subscriptions for free online blogs where bloggers write pieces that are rarely fact-checked or vetted. Internet media is often all about enjoyment. Therefore, I’ve been surprised to see … Read more

Teenagers May Hold the Key

This post originally appeared on Murder Is Everywhere. If you read books set in other countries, you care about things that happen beyond your front door. The recent blog posts by  Annamaria Alfieri and Cara Black as well as a poem by Karuna Ezara Parikh are powerful testimonies to read after Nov 12-13. What’s on my mind are the … Read more