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OP-ED: Munching moths making meals of my Merino

For 12 years, during the week, I worked out of an apartment in Pittsburgh. When COVID hit, I moved back home full time. The problem is I did not move back alone. Somewhere between the packing and the movers, a few stowaways hitched a ride. When I opened my closet this summer, two tiny, beige, ...

Trump has an ‘America first’ problem

On the sidewalk outside a Walgreens in Chicago, an agent of the federal government pinned a 21-year-old man to the pavement, while a woman screamed, "He's a citizen! He's a citizen!" Pulling up a cloth mask to conceal the lower portion of his face, the agent, from Immigration and Customs ...

Column on suicide provokes reader responses

Here are some responses to my Oct. 9 column on suicide: Q. Thank you for your wise words on suicide. I lost my brother that way when I was a teen. I’m in my 60s and I feel I’ve never really gotten over it. I’ve lived my life, married, had babies, now I’m a grandma to three, and it ...

OP-ED: Democracy depends on trust

Trust in American institutions has been dissipating for over a half a century. Long before we had the COVID-19 arguments over masks, we already had Watergate, Vietnam, and Iran-Contra. Each of those made us wonder if the folks in charge knew what they were doing or were lying to our faces. For ...

A pathway to undoing U.S. democracy

Ironically enough, the actions of the president who was the chief champion of American democracy to the world in the 20th century could be repurposed by Donald Trump to do serious, perhaps permanent, harm to that very form of government in the U.S. In the summer of 1941, as the United States ...

Teen struggles with another’s suicide

Q. Something really awful happened. My momÄ¢¹½ÊÓÆµ best friend has a daughter who committed suicide. I didn’t know the daughter that well, but I observed her mom grieve and my mom got all worried about me. I’ve felt depressed off and on in my life but I’ve never even thought of ending it all. ...