Arlene Goldbard

Here’s something I’ve learned about growing older: there’s always more growing to do. Every time I pause to draw a self-satisfied breath at how wise I am becoming—how I finally learned my lesson, avoided repeating the same sticky mistake, saw an opportunity in time to seize it—I catch a whiff of a new challenge bearing [...]

A reader send me this great blog featuring lyrics and videos of songs about Barack Obama created by musicians with roots around the world—Africa, Mexico, the Caribbean and beyond.
Some of these artists vote in the U.S., some cannot. Why do musicians beyond our own borders care so much about one of the candidates in [...]

It’s kind of a stressful time in my personal soap opera. Every once in a while I pause to give myself a boost, repeating two words that have a remarkable ability to lift my spirits: President Obama!
When friends are in the vicinity, I tend to add a few more words of rational exuberance, such [...]

The same qualities Hillary Clinton is displaying now—commitment, tenacity, fortitude in the face of opposition and ridicule—need to be cultivated by anyone willing to stand up for an unpopular position. The thing is, it matters greatly whether that position derives from a wounded certainty of one’s own merit and therefore entitlement, as I’m afraid is [...]

Never in my lifelong observation of politics have I seen an election to match this one for extravagant theatricality: Laughter! Tears! Elation! Nausea! This campaign is like a periodic table of human capability, from venal self-interest to hermetic self-delusion, from moral blindness to moral grandeur. To find another story that encompasses as much of the [...]

Passover—Pesach—starts Saturday night. This holiday, halfway into the Hebrew calendar year, invites us to consider the story of the exodus from slavery—from Mitzrayim (which means Egypt and also straits or narrow, constricting places)—as if it had happened to us, as if it were happening right now.
Every year, holiday preparations ask us to seek out [...]

Everyone I talk to is exhausted by the prospect of seven more months of presidential campaigning, American-style. But many people are also resigned: this is the system, it always has been, what can you do about it?
The culture of politics says a great deal about a country. (You can read more on this subject in [...]

I have a dear friend who understands the world of finance as well as I know my way around my own kitchen. For a long time, she’s been sending me alarming bulletins from people who keep a close eye on banks, Wall Street and federal financial regulators.
The economy has developed such an elaborate and [...]

There are two sides to the human proclivity to view the big world through the little world of our own experience. When I’m depressed, I project my misery outward: the disturbing headlines jump out of the newspaper and pile up at my feet; only the bad news seems true, and the rest recedes. When I’m [...]

When I read earlier this week these words of the Dalai Lama on the Chinese murders of Tibetans demonstrating for human rights and self-determination, I was moved by the depth of helplessness expressed by this great teacher who is seldom seen as shaken. The Dalai Lama’s quiet words struck me as it would to see [...]