Category Archives: Opinion

Thank you

Dear Readers, I wrote my first Perspectives (“Haiti”) on January 2, 2012. (You can read them all at https://www.jamesgblaine.me). Initially, the blogs were limited to 250 words and published five (sometimes six) times a week. Their intent was to present a modest thought, one that sought to connect the personal world to the public world, […]

Rebuilding America from the bottom up

Last week in Washington, D.C., I stood at the top of the Lincoln Memorial looking across the Mall to the Washington Monument. Behind me in the rotunda, two of Lincoln’s greatest speeches have been carved, in their entirety, into the wall on either side of his statue. Each is short, powerful and poignant: the Gettysburg […]

“A republic if you can keep it”*

It has been a few days since my last post. I have been traveling, visiting children and grandchildren, celebrating birthdays and impending graduations, and tomorrow I am off to Mexico for my godson’s wedding. But it’s not just the travel and living out of a suitcase that has caused my quiet pen, for these are […]

Rethinking Community

̛I have what may seem kind of a cosmic question: Are we experiencing the contraction of a sense of community, in the broadest meaning of the term, that had been expanding for the last 50 years or more? I had come to believe, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., that the long arc of history […]

American Apartheid on Dexter Avenue

Journey to Montgomery (Part 3 of a series) “Ran away, a negro girl called Mary. Has a small scar over her eye, a good many teeth missing, the letter A is branded to her cheek and forehead.” “Ran away, a negro woman and two children. A few days before she went off, I burnt her […]

“Southern trees bear strange fruit”*

Journey to Montgomery (Part 2 of a series) Last week began with Earth Day and ended, at least for me, backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. It was quite a journey – both physical and cultural – that took me from Maine to Washington, D.C., for a benefit concert sponsored by JusticeAid, which was founded […]

Pete McCloskey speaks out on Earth Day

Disclosure: Pete McCloskey, of whom I wrote in my last blog, is married to a friend of mine. The real founder of Earth Day in 1970 was a great progressive Democrat, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. He wanted Earth Day, set for April 22nd, the same day as Arbor Day, to be a bipartisan and […]