“Find some calm, Kate,” my pickleball coach, Roland, cajoled me from across the court a few months ago. He thwacked another neon-green ball in my direction. “Do less.” “But I am not a calm person!” I shouted back, a complete understatement. I am a tightly wound, neurodivergent, people-pleasing extrovert who lives in fear of making […]

With Congress on its summer recess, we’ve gotten a bit of a break from Republicans’ ad nauseam complaints that Donald Trump is a victim of a “two-tier system of justice” — one that goes after him and others in their party, the other favoring Democrats, who supposedly run the whole caper from the White House. […]

Spencer Cox, the new chairman of the National Governors Association, is promoting the idea of “healthy conflict.” The Utah governor has become concerned about the growing problem of toxic arguments in society. As the Washington Post reports, Cox wants people to learn how to “disagree better.” We should all try to think of ways we […]

Perhaps this is the summer that finally renders climate change real. Flooding and soaring temperatures across the nation have made global warming indisputable. The problem, as always, is how to reach political consensus on an action plan. Republicans want to plant a “trillion” trees; Democrats want to limit carbon emissions. If the nation’s response to […]

The Chinese have an expression that I’ve always liked: “No coincidence, no story.” A story should contain some kind of strange or unexpected twist; if it doesn’t, it’s not much of a story. Here’s mine. A month ago, I surprised my friend Pete at the hospital where he was getting his last set of infusions […]