July 2022

The signs rarely point in the same direction all at once, but recent stats and observations support the idea that we’re experiencing a needed slowdown in the economy even as we hold our breaths and hope it doesn’t slow too much.

While the stock and bond markets likely await their next downward legs and we are beset by political ads, I would like to talk about the state of citizenship in these United States. As a student of history, I remind myself regularly that our nation has suffered through presidents even worse than Trump or Biden. Members of Congress have sometimes resorted to one duel leading to death, canings and stabbings of each other. I recall the country’s mood in the dark days of assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, the riots in Kansas City and other cities, student protests and riots, sometimes quite violent, over the Vietnam War.

EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Pope Francis celebrated his first big Mass in Canada on Tuesday as reverberations echoed from his historic apology for the Catholic Church’s role in severing generations of Indigenous family ties by participating in Canada’s “catastrophic” residential school system.