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Dear Children,

The years have turned over and suddenly you are 16 and 19 years old—a young man with a 4G phone and a young woman in college.  You have never known anything but wireless and mobility.

You are living in interesting times, dear children. You have seen our nation attacked and have felt truly threatened. You see acts of violence presented on television and on videos; did you know that you will have seen 100,000 murders, real or portrayed, on media screens in your lifetime? You have seen presidents and presidential candidates lie on television about their personal lives.  You have seen the first nonwhite p

James Arness, aka Matt Dillon, was among those who died in 2011; a lot died with him.

He was tall, lean, and carried a grim humanity about him.  James Arness, handpicked by John Wayne (who had better things to do in 1955), portrayed the signature Marshal Dillon, with dryness and few speeches, for 20 years.  “Gunsmoke” was the longest-running network television drama in history and Arness anchored, but never overshadowed, the other major characters. 

The 2011 death of James Arness, at a ripe old age, and far-removed from the conveyed violence and zephyrs of his hallmark role, is a milestone in entertainment history.  Actually a mild and gentle man who was kind and receptive to his fans, Arness was o

I wrote this favorite column after realizing, after several painful interludes, and an inner struggle against the vanity of "winning" such a remarkable and beautiful and wise woman, that this second marriage had to be stored in my heart and not go to my head.  We had really helped each other, in long talks, deep revelations, for about a year after our prior marriages had dissolved.  There were four children, of widely different ages, involved and not without anger.  It just took time to realize that our friendship-grounded marriage was like good leather--fine but flawed and therefore real.

--Ben

I keep thinking about the heretofore anonymous suffering of the boys—now men—who live still in the legal and social shadows of the crimes allegedly committed upon them by “mentoring” role models at more than one major university. 

“Penn State” has become another metaphor for heinous pedophiliac misconduct; we can hardly imagine the actual felonies being inflicted on lads drawn into the steam, showers, and darkness of truly ailing men living in delusional fiefdoms of impunity.   

Sometime in the blistering heat of 1965, while Martin Luther King, Jr. and his allies were marching for the nation’s first inclusive voting rights bill, a wiry, feisty, articulate Baptist minister stood up to the condescending white sheriff of Dallas County—which encompasses Selma, Ala.,  Rev. Cordy Tindell Vivian, better known as “C.T.,” was 41 years old at the time, a local pastor gifted with vision, strong loins, and indisputable courage.

The tall, bulky white Sheriff Jim Clark, viscerally racist, stood in the doorway of the county voter registration building and (along with a bevy of his deputies) taunted C.T. Vivian and a crowd of blacks who—nonviolently and peacefully—demanded the right to enter and register.  Of some 15,000 African Americans living in

“Can two walk together, unless they have agreed?”  Such was the trenchant challenge about relationships put out by the Biblical prophet Amos—it’s as old as the Bible and as new as this morning, when several billion couples rose from the bed in one manner, mood, or another.

Audrey and I are as likely to have met as two falling stars from different galaxies.  But when the fates organized a plan, we found each other several years ago, long after the closing trajectories of two drooping marriages, and began a friendship, a kindred spirit, a mutually supportive discourse of relief and insight that restored a sense of hope and promise and even structure to days of frenzy, confusion, and not a little anguish.  We actually talked endlessly about what divorce will

In the scheme of things, against the news of the Libyan’s dictator’s death, the heartrending collective cri de coeur of the Occupy movement, the now-systemic meanness in Washington, the banalities of the endless presidential race, it probably doesn't add up to very much.   But in my heart, I shall never forget it, because it was spontaneous, genuine, and socially uncharacteristic.

I was taking my regular morning walk along the lagoons and canyons that bring so much peace to life here (in Del Mar, Calif.), enjoying the companionship, as always, of my frisky dalmatian.   The sea breeze exhilarated and the mountains to the east filled the eye with the good sense of one’s own smallness.   People who jog by are

At the time of this writing, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit was to be imminently released to his family in Israel after five years as a hostage held by the Palestinian terror organization, Hamas.   Many members of the Jewish community have been recalling the old Talmudic adage, “Save a life, and you save the whole world.”  It doesn’t matter to us that over one thousand Palestinian terrorists are being exchanged for this single individual; every life is the personification of God’s image.

He is ever so slight, frail looking, and, in many ways, the physical antithesis of the perceived, muscular modern Israeli soldier.  In fact, Israel Defense Forces originally labeled him almost too delicate a young man to even be inducted into its lauded army, someone with “a low medical profile.”  But he insisted on combat service, a national rite of passage in the beleaguered Jewish state, which has been under the siege of war and terrorism since the very day of its independence from Great Britain, May 14, 1948.        

Religion is on the front burner for many, particularly in the Jewish community, as we have celebrated the birthday of creation through Rosh Hashanah, and then the more severe interlude of introspection and soul cleansing of Yom Kippur. Religion doesn’t always work, but these days it is definitely working. And people are asking interesting questions.

In this world environment of such searing religious divisiveness, even a question could invite a clash, an edict, or worse. But it’s an intellectual inquiry.  When religion stops people from thinking and discussing, the result is, well, Iran or any of the smaller-in-scope but still tragically skewed broods of violence that spew from religious fundamentalism and tyranny that is manifested everywhere, including here in the United States.

The death of Eleanor Mondale Poling, daughter of Vice President Walter F. and Joan Mondale, just two days after the demise of Kara Kennedy Allen, daughter of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, serves to remind us of the tyranny of mortality and its indifference to age and station.

People find rueful satisfaction in whispering about “the Kennedy curse” when yet another young member of the clan dies but the survivors, parents, brothers, sisters, children, have always been real people who hurt and grieve and must cope in the flare of public chatter.   Kara Kennedy was a producer whose work centered on a variety of non-for-profit endeavors in health and recovery.  Eleanor was an actress and artiste of considerable renown.  Both women had battled cancers; both were only 51.