Columns

In defense of opposing drag queen story hour

From my earliest childhood, I attended the Mummer’s Parade in Philadelphia every New Year’s day, watching husky fellows with banjos, full-face makeup and glitter sashay down Broad Street. It’s a tradition that, while difficult to explain to out-of-towners, is near and dear to our Quaker City hearts.

Real Bill of Rights: Freedom from medical bills

It was June 4th of 2024 when a sharp, excruciating pain under my right ribs introduced itself — because clearly, my body thought I needed a dramatic plot twist. After a night that made every nightmare I’d ever had look like a Disney short, we dragged ourselves to the doctor’s office.

Why Flag Day matters

Flag Day, celebrated every June 14, is one of America’s lesser-known holidays, but my father never forgot it. June 14 marks the day in 1777 when the Continental Congress officially adopted the Stars and Stripes as our national flag.

He gathered plants and parishioners

Father Augustus Barthélemy Langlois is buried near the epistle altar of St. Martin de Tours Church in St. Martinville.

Are you in the same boat as me this Father’s Day?

Some would say that I’m in a “sweet spot” this Father’s Day. Others would deem it a “bittersweet spot.

Weaponized words behind killings of embassy staffers

When the Tufts student was arrested by ICE for an op-ed she wrote condemning Israel, many protested the “criminalization” of words. “She just wrote a column,” they said.

Saving America’s Southwest water reserves

Some say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Cute. But try telling that to the ghosts of 20th-century water policy, especially the concrete evangelists who brought us the Hoover Dam. They didn’t just build a dam. They built a monument to a myth: man’s dominion over nature. A beacon of grit.

Let’s bring back the sounds of summer

Summer sounded better in the ‘70s. I woke every morning to the birds chirping outside my window screen, a dewy chill in the air. I’d smell my father’s pipe, which he smoked while he read the paper downstairs. I’d go down to greet him.

Ready for the 250th birthday of the United States Army?

No, I won’t make it to the Grand Military Parade in Washington, D.C.

Can people be too lazy to grow figs?

The Crowley Signal was part of what it called a “coastal country chorus” urging people to plant fig trees in south Louisiana in the spring of 1909, and the editor could not help but wonder why he had to bring up the subject in the first place.