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Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To Holly and Michael Guerrero for their 34th wedding anniversary this month and for their highly creative and definitively newsy methods of falling in love and furthering their romance. You see, Holly, ever so slyly, slipped her phone number into an edition of The Tribune Chronicle delivered to Michael’s family home in the mid-1980s. Michael took the bait, called her and romance blossomed, punctuated by his own newspaper-oriented proposal about eight years later. He took out a quarter-page ad in The Tribune, asking his beloved “Sport” for her hand in marriage and was on his ...

Challenges remain in fighting all types of heart disease

February has long gained fame as a month to celebrate the heart in two completely different spheres. Of course, there’s the metaphoric heart captured on Valentine’s cards designed to conjure up feelings of happiness, romance and love. Contrast that with the very serious — sometimes deadly serious — business of the American Heart Association in drawing much-needed awareness to the human heart and the diseases that so often attack that life-giving organ in our region, state, nation and world. Yes, cardiovascular disease rises as the most common and most destructive killer ...

Why so much faith in politics?

It’s only February and other than the almost nonstop coverage of the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping story, especially cable networks are obsessed with the November election, though it is more than eight months away. So much can — and likely will — change before then. Why all the attention? When I was active on the lecture circuit my opening line was “I’m happy to be here tonight from Washington, D.C., where the only politicians with convictions are in prison.” Another laugh-getter was “Do you know the meaning of politics? Poly means many and ticks are blood-sucking ...

Trump stops race to save the creation

May we talk about spiritual matters? “In the beginning,” the Bible opens, “God created the heavens and the earth.” Several lines down, God says, let humankind “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” We humans were given stewardship of earth, but global warming is remaking the world beneath us. We are the cause, but we still have the power to stop or at least greatly slow the desecration of what was placed in our ...

The con consuming American politics

There is a growing sense of frustration coursing through American politics, and it is no longer confined to one party or ideology. That frustration has real roots. Major institutions badly damaged their credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, the excesses of the Black Lives Matter movement, and years of breathless coverage of Russiagate. At the same time, artificial intelligence looms over the labor market with few clear answers about what comes next. Add to that a political class that often appears shamelessly corrupt, and the result is a public that feels misled, ignored and ...

A short note to Kristi Noem

The New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security has sent Google (owner of YouTube), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), and other media corporations subpoenas for the names on accounts that criticize ICE enforcement. The department wants to identify Americans who oppose what it’s doing. I’ll save them time. Hello? Kristi Noem? Robert Reich here. I hear you’re trying to find the names of people who are making negative comments on social media about ICE enforcement. Look no further. I’ve done it frequently. I’m still doing it. This note to you is another ...