As part of last week’s budget bill compromise, Congress promised to discuss immigration legislation. If history is any guide, that’s nothing to celebrate. The history of immigration legislation in this country is all about keeping people out. A century ago … Continue reading →
My poem on the difficult issue of living charitably and hospitably, as moral authorities such as the writers of the New Testament say we should, is appearing in the September issue of the online poetry journal, Verse-Virtual. The poem is … Continue reading →
The black-and-white photo below pictures a moment in the round-up of immigrants in America 100 years ago. The suspicious ‘outsiders’ are white-skinned people from southern and eastern Europe — Italians, Jews, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Serbs, Ukrainians, Lithuanians. The mass round-up … Continue reading →
If you wanted to build a wall a hundred years ago, it would have had to be on the Atlantic. I’ll be speaking on my novel “Suosso’s Lane” at Duxbury Library on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2 p.m., my first opportunity … Continue reading →
It’s very unusual to see the entire world celebrating — or even acknowledging — the same important moment at the same time. The last example of this to my mind is the worldwide welcoming of the new millennium at … Continue reading →
It’s a New Year. I hope 2017 is not the year in which we say goodbye to the two century-plus long experiment in American democracy. Or, equally as worrying, the beginning of a political breakdown that will lead to social … Continue reading →
“Suosso’s Lane,” a book named after a street in North Plymouth, has some considerable history in West Bridgewater. The prosecution theory, to use the word loosely, of how Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco were involved in the robbery of the shoe … Continue reading →
Do we learn from the past? Can we? Monday evening, Oct. 17, I’ll be speaking on “Suosso’s Lane” at The James Library and Center for the Arts, 24 West St., Norwell, Mass. The time is 7 p.m.; it’s free. With … Continue reading →
I will be bringing copies of “Suosso’s Lane” to the Milton Public Library on Sunday, Oct. 16, to take part in a new book program called “Fall Into Reading: Meet Local Authors.” The participating authors will have an opportunity to … Continue reading →
Boston’s North End, an Italian-American neighborhood for a hundred years, was hopping on a Tuesday evening last week. The neighborhood’s new book store, I AM, hosted a program that included long-suppressed film footage of the Sacco-Vanzetti funeral march, a reading … Continue reading →