Everyone loves to go for a picnic in Bhutan. The young do not feel intruded when the old tag along with packed lunches. The old have no qualms about sharing high school jokes with their grandchildren as the pines and the cypresses shade their walk to the picnic. They carry packed lunches [...]

Responding to an argument I made over at the Economist's Democracy in America blog, Kevin Drum says he's not so optimistic that the Iraq-war disaster has made America unlikely to engage in foreign military adventures for the next few decades.

We left Vietnam in 1975 and were supposedly so [...]

I've learned a great deal at my time here on True/Slant - mostly that blogging is damn hard work and you've got to be passionate about your subject or it's not worth it for either the reader or the writer. That said, I will continue to write about the topics [...]

My old man taught me to say "so long" whenever we parted because he contended "goodbye" should be reserved for permanent occasions, like the one Emily Dickinson refers to here:

Good-by to the life I used to live, And the world I used to know; And kiss the hills for me, [...]

When today’s boomers, not to mention today’s pre-boomers (the new-chic word for geezer) were young, stress had not been invented. Oh, moms got frazzled with everything, dads (and occasionally moms too) came home bushed after a long hard day at the office, office buddies groused about too much work for [...]

Today the Anti-Defamation League surprisingly and inexplicably released a statement opposing the Park51 community center: Statement On Islamic Community Center Near Ground Zero.

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message [...]

It feels like the last day of high school around here, or more accurately, like the high school is closing down and kicking all us kids out. As you no doubt know by now, Forbes acquired True/Slant and is shuttering the site. As they turn off the lights, everyone is getting [...]

'The Pierced Boy,' click to enlarge. (Photo: San Jose Mercury News) With all of True/Slant saying farewell, it feels lonely posting anything at all today. But before I sign off, there's one last thing I'd like to share, a photograph I stumbled across several months back while paging through one [...]

Retirement village? Assisted living? Co-housing? Age-restricted or aging-in-place communities? Inter-generational cooperative? This space has explored many of the growing varieties of housing choices for boomers and elders when the time comes to downsize, rightsize, clear out or economize. Here's a new one that's making the news: think global. Even with (and [...]

With True/Slant in its final days, I've decided to forego the sentimental (at least for now), and share a few more pieces with readers before the lights are turned off. Of the dozens of would-be posts in my publishing queue (and there are many), I've been wanting to post this [...]