Sightings Articles
Our Declaration
Here’s a suggestion for this Independence Day: Read the Declaration of Independence. But don’t just read it silently on your own; read it out loud with other people. To quote Tevye the Milkman: “Sounds crazy, no?” Perhaps, but in this column I’d ...
July 4, 2019
God Bless You Please, Mr. Robinson
On April 25, 1719, the English-speaking world was first introduced to The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner ... Written by Himself. The immediate reception of this book must have been strange and surprising f...
July 1, 2019
Defending the Ideals of Freedom in Our Non-Ideal Public Life
Democratic public life at its best...
June 24, 2019
A Voice on Trial
Two weeks ago, Rev. William J. Barber II was convicted on charges of trespassing in the North Carolina State Legislative Building. ...
June 20, 2019
A Pilgrim and Her Progress
I’m not able not to read Jia Tolentino. Initially compelled just by her name, she has easily held my ongoing attention with a prose at once lyrical and smart, and a perspective apposite in its topics and utterly different from my own. She teaches me ...
June 17, 2019
Diet and Free Exercise
How do religious beliefs decide what prisoners and patients eat? Two recent court cases in Virginia pit religious diets against the need to serve diverse populations in public institutions. In one case, a prison inmate has requested kosher food, whi...
June 13, 2019
The Death of Politics?
Today’s “sighting” owes its inspiration to a brief moment of déjà vu that hit me recently as a new-but-familiar book title came across my desk...