american-culture

COMMENTARY
Group of friends having fun

In our trying times, we need the healing power of humor more than ever | Lloyd E. Sheaffer

BY: - February 28, 2023

Life’s road is a bumpy one. Humor and laughter can help smooth out the ride.

COMMENTARY
Sunrise at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Israel (Getty Images).

There’s a secular need for the High Holy Days. This is why | Bruce Ledewitz

BY: - October 11, 2022

Who doesn’t long to start again? Who doesn’t wish to shed all the mistakes of the past?

COMMENTARY
The 1994 movie ‘Clerks’ was one of many ‘Slacker films’ that were made in the 1990s. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

If you’re surprised by the anti-work movement, maybe you need to watch more movies | Opinion

BY: - October 7, 2022

Some of the most fascinating movies make viewers ask: 'What if all that hard work isn’t really worth it?'

COMMENTARY
The James Webb Space Telescope produced this image, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, a view of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 and the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. It was released July 11, 2022. (NASA)

The Webb telescope’s images remind us of who we really are | Quentin Young

BY: - July 22, 2022

The views of the universe are gifts of perspective.

COMMENTARY

From Ike to insurrection and beyond: The class of ’70 turns 70 | Opinion

BY: - March 6, 2022

We grew up in the televised world. Now we live in the wired world.

COMMENTARY

Goodbye to the high church of social media. It’s been fun, but not really | Alanah Davis

BY: - October 11, 2021

I like this new reality and the control over how I feel. I’m not absorbing unnecessary toxicity or ridicule. And I think everyone deserves that freedom.

COMMENTARY

Amid our fellow citizens’ foolish choices, how do we maintain our empathy? | Opinion

BY: - October 7, 2021

That these divisions have so deeply infiltrated every aspect of our lives, including our ability to grieve, to offer compassion or empathy, leaves me more unsettled than almost anything else over the past 18 months.

COMMENTARY

Americans are deserting the pews. How one simple step could reverse it | John A. Tures

BY: - July 29, 2021

Isn’t it true that you miss 100 percent of the fish you don’t cast your line out for?

COMMENTARY

Why Easter is called Easter, and other little-known facts about the holiday | Analysis

BY: - April 4, 2021

Since the days following the winter solstice gradually become longer and less dark, it was ideal symbolism for the birth of “the light of the world” as stated in the New Testament’s Gospel of John.

In Philly, a second John Coltrane mural falls to new development; but developer offers to recreate it

BY: - July 21, 2020

“That’s our mural, so put it where we can see,” Green said. “Don’t put it in West Philly when you know it was down here in North Philly.”

COMMENTARY

How our partisan divide creates different Americas. And how to fix it | Opinion

BY: - September 23, 2019

With political disputes magnified and amplified by disparate, even opposing, ways of life, it’s harder to see political rivals as fellow citizens.

COMMENTARY

Why a lack of humility might be what’s really ailing our politics | Opinion

BY: - May 24, 2019

While there has probably never been an excess of intellectual humility in Washington, D.C., it’s rarely been as nakedly apparent as it is today.