Summer of Miracles

Summer of Miracles

  By Tom Robotham  We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969 – The Eagles In July, 1979, President Carter went on national television to deliver what came to known as his “malaise speech.” At the heart of the address was Carter’s assertion that the country was...
Summer of Miracles

What Remains

  By Tom Robotham  A church is there to teach you to pay attention, and to awaken the poetry in your soul. ~ Margaret Visser, The Geometry of Love.    On the afternoon of April 15, I received a call from Jeff Maisey, the publisher of this magazine. When I...
Summer of Miracles

Play Ball

By Tom Robotham  For the past year or so, my life has been marked by a series of unsettling disruptions. It all started last spring when my 15-year-old car, which I loved, finally bit the dust. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that big a deal. But it turned...
Summer of Miracles

Politics in the Classroom

By Tom Robotham  Recently an old friend shared on Facebook a link to a two-year-old article in The Staten Island Advance—a paper for which I used to work—about a New York City resident who was upset by a vocabulary question on his 11-year-old daughter’s homework...
Summer of Miracles

A Nation in Denial

By Tom Robotham Two years ago, I delivered a talk at the Tidewater Community College Literary Festival called “Scenes from a White Boy’s Life,” in which I reflected on my lifelong efforts to understand “the problem of the color line,” as W.E.B Du Bois put it. I talked...
Summer of Miracles

Of Youth and Age

By Tom Robotham I am not going to make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience. – Ronald Reagan   Now that 2019 is underway, it won’t be long before the next presidential campaign begins...