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As we approach the semiquincentennial, the anniversary of Paine's Common Sense, I hope that any citizen concerned with the state of our democracy reads Common Sense, 2026. In 1776, when Paine held public readings of the pamphlet in communities far and wide, he understood one important truth, the strength and power of public opinion. As stated in the preface, "this redaction project—this interaction with a foundational text—is a rousing democratic act available to all American

At the time of deepest listening to this song, I was in Waco, mowing the lot on which sat the first house my wife and I ever bought. The entire neighborhood was built on the site of a former military base, and our yard held layers of broken glass. After a rain, the shards would rise to the surface and I’d go around collecting the pieces in a can...There we weathered the pandemic – me, my wife, and our 2-year-old son – while also weathering a high risk pregnancy.

Death remembered the time before the souk. He remembered when the mud huts first appeared in the bulrushes along the Tigris. He remembered when the caliph Al-Mansur commanded the great city’s rise from the rose-pink soil, an impressive feat of human will. After a particularly busy work trip––filthy Europeans and their plagues––he had returned to Baghdad and discovered, to his delight, that the coppersmiths had constructed this narrow alleyway and lined it with their wares.