Originally published  in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Thanksgiving is traditionally a time for families to gather together and eat their heads off. Many are unaware that November is Native American Month or they commemorate it with the usual “pilgrims and Indians” stories that celebrate the generosity of the Wampanoag people to the first settlers. They bypass the genocide of the Wampanoag that followed, and the removal of Native Americans from their lands. The invisibility has allowed ignorance of their history and land for many folks.

Continue reading Giving thanks, and respect – by Deborah Levine →

 (originally published as an opinion column for The  Chattanooga Times Free Press) 

The banning of books has been around for centuries and America is no exception. We have banned books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We banned 273 books in 2020 with more to come. But don’t the recent controversies over school library books seem a bit irrelevant to you? After all, we’re online 24/7 and the influence of books seems pitifully modest. Unless authors have a huge following on Tik Tok and Twitter, students are unlikely to storm classroom libraries. So why the brouhaha?

Continue reading Second thoughts on banning books – by Deborah Levine →

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Some folks cried Death to Facebook while others turned to Twitter during the FB Blackout. Entertaining tweets welcomed newcomers and entertained us longtime Twitter-ists. “Is that (outage) before or after injecting bleach into the CPUs and shining a UV light in all the network ports?”  Others referred to ads aimed at young women, “… if Instagram is down, who’s gonna constantly try to convince me that my life would be better with lip injections?” I laughed at the tweet suggesting we rename it “social NOTwork” but sighed at hopes that we’d return to a pre-2000 culture. Not gonna happen!

Continue reading Facebook’s nasty smell – by Deborah Levine →

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Our kids are in the COVID crosshairs. In July, 38,654 pediatric Covid cases were reported. Just a week later, that number increased 85 %. When today’s youth look back on this Covid era, I wonder what they’ll say. They might say that the delta variant might have been deterred if vaccinations had been embraced immediately. They may ask why it took so long to authorize a Covid vaccine for children.

Continue reading Schools, Masks and Politics  – by Deborah Levine →

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press 

If you’re the richest person on Earth, your next step might be to launch yourself into space. That’s what Jeff Bezos has done. I guess this planet is just too boring to invest in. Maybe that’s why his company, Amazon, paid an effective federal income tax rate of only 4.3 % on U.S. income, even when Trump’s administration dropped the rate to 21%. Continue reading Offshore billionaires launch into space – by Deborah Levine →

 (Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press) 

Attempts to bring our diverse society together is nothing new. Controversies and road blocks surrounding the attempts aren’t new either. It may seem that way to some folks with furious debate over “structural racism”, but it’s the terminology that’s new, not the reality.

Our language has struggled over decades to find ways to express the mission of inclusion without creating a nasty backlash. Back in the day, Multiculturalism was supposed to heal disparities. It did not. Then it was Diversity. That didn’t resolve much and Diversity & Inclusion became popular. Not a major game changer, so we went to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) to address structural disparities. Has DEI had the desired results in the community, workplace, university, or any place? I’m not convinced.
Continue reading Words shape us for better or worse – by Deborah Levine →

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press 

There hasn’t been much noise from the climate change deniers this week despite data showing that there are 109 congressional representatives and 30 senators, who refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change. That’s 25% of our federal elected officials including Tennessee’s Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and Congressman Chuck Fleischmann.

Maybe the silence is due to the unprecedented heatwave in the West and Southwest. The photos of livestock roaming brown fields with no grass might encourage the deniers to lay low. Not to mention the pictures of Lake Mead. If you’ve ever toured Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam you know that this symbol of American scientific innovation built during The Depression was a stunning tourist destination well as providing drinking water and farming irrigation. Today’s situation leaves the water level at its lowest since the 1930s. You can now see the stone walls of the lake and we’ll see even more in the coming months.

Continue reading Denial doesn’t make it rain – by Deborah Levine →