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  • Refugees

    Edward Martin|Jul 6, 2023

    Since the advent of 24 hour per day, 365 days per year news cycle we’ve become accustomed to being inundated with so much news that we easily ignore news of great importance to someone else but doesn’t affect us directly. Sometimes there are problems we hear about but ignore even though the folks who know best try to alert us that it is going to get so big that it impacts everyone. Those are the problems we need to pay attention to sooner rather than later. There are 10 million refugees in the...

  • Social Contracts

    Edward Martin|Jun 22, 2023

    Human interactions can, generally speaking, be reduced to either force or mutuality of respect. Arguments can be made as to where we draw that line but we behave in certain ways either because we feel forced to do so or because we wish to nurture respectful relationships. If our behavior is based on wishing to have a society that functions in a manner which nurtures relationships we behave in a certain way regardless of whether or not there is a reasonable expectation of any further...

  • Libraries

    Edward Martin|Jun 15, 2023

    Sometimes it seems as if humanity lurches from disaster to disaster with brief periods of enlightenment in between. As we look back through history we learn about the so-called great conquerors. We hold up as persons of note men like Alexander, Genghis Khan, Attila, on and on. We build statues to these “great” men. Somehow the fact that their fame rests on the slaughter of untold millions of people who were just going about their lives before being butchered to serve the megalomania of a con...

  • Multiverses?

    Edward Martin|Jun 1, 2023

    A friend is taking music lessons from a talented teacher. She’s in Japan, he’s in New York. That, by itself, is utterly astonishing to many of us older folks. She assigned him a piece of music which he thinks is too difficult for him. In encouragement she told him she wants him to relate to the music, not the individual notes. He’s focusing on trying to get the notes right. She’s telling him to get out of his own way and play the music. We’ve all had moments when we did something exceeding...

  • 1913

    Edward Martin|May 25, 2023

    My mother was born on May 19th, 1913. When she was born 110 years ago, World War I hadn’t happened, the Civil War was a recent memory for many. There were ex-slaves who still worked in the family fields and household. The whole idea of the Civil Rights movement was unimaginable to virtually anyone. Radio had been invented but I don’t think it had reached rural Mississippi. Television and computers were things of which few folks could imagine. We can go back some 2,500 years to get some per...

  • Prayer

    Edward Martin, Local Contributor|May 18, 2023

    When Rabbi Harold S. Kushner died last month my mind went back some 40 years to the publication of his book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. It remains, to me, one of the very best books ever written on the subject of human suffering and how we think about God. Rabbi Kushner spoke from experience, he wrote honestly and compassionately. His son died of progeria shortly after his 14th birthday. I heartily recommend his book for anyone dealing with grief and the unfairness that so oft...

  • Certainties

    Edward Martin|May 4, 2023

    I saw a clip from the old show All in the Family. Meathead is putting on his socks and shoes. He puts on one sock then puts on that shoe. Archie, who is watching, goes ballistic because he believes it is only acceptable to put on both socks before putting on a shoe. The debate is ridiculous. The point made is not ridiculous. Archie, in his supreme narcissism and narrow mindedness, cannot conceive of anyone doing anything that doesn’t conform to his idea of how things should be. If social m...

  • Grief and Relief

    Edward Martin, Local Courier Contributor|Apr 20, 2023

    A friend put in a request for a column addressing a sensitive subject. Over the years numerous folks have expressed similar emotions and there’s always guilt in their voices when they’ve told me about it. When a loved one dies, the one left behind feels grief but, frequently, also relief. Our relief produces guilt. “If I truly loved him or her, how can I feel relief that they’re gone?” Grief is a complex issue. It is neither simple nor is there a standard that applies to everyone. People ma...

  • Along the way...

    Edward Martin|Apr 13, 2023

    A reader, who clearly didn't care for columns devoted to science, said, "You know, science gets things wrong." She was, of course, correct. Science does get things wrong sometimes. The difference between science and opinion though, is when science is shown to have made a mistake it seeks to correct the mistake rather than digging in its heels and defending the indefensible. An example of scientific methodology was observation of the planet Uranus, discovered in 1781. As scientists studied it...