Margaret Mead begins her tango of a conversation with James Baldwin by launching into an extraordinarily self-congratulatory solo about what she calls the “romantic, good Northern behavior” that defines her beliefs about race relations in America and how she acts on those beliefs.

Baldwin listens patiently and encouragingly. And he grabs onto her word “romantic” like Itzhak Perlman or Charlie Parker, returning to the theme and improvising on it for the rest of the dialogue, which took place in 1970.

Launch day has come! Today is the official release of my new book, “Home of the Brave.” Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1785356364

In the book I describe the leadership style of Melanie Kline, who founded a grassroots project for vets in Montrose, Colorado.

Kline was able to accomplish so much to help veterans and her community because she not only welcomed other ideas, she pestered people to bring their initiatives to Welcome Home and made sure those people felt welcome to stick around to see their pet projects realized.

Food is sustenance, certainly.

It’s also a way to communicate ideas and traditions. Sanjay Rajan, who created Communal Platter to create evenings like a West African feast I recently enjoyed, says he wants to bring “people from different backgrounds together over food and culture.”

His goal sounds simple. When he gets it right, we get something rich and complex.
 

I got my first passport when I was 12. I was headed to France with other students from San Diego on a trip organized by our public school district. That passport and its successors have allowed me to travel the globe. But it was my parents, who I don’t think had passports themselves when I got mine, who opened the world to me.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s ancestors were forced to come to this country; his descendants still struggle to be accepted as equal citizens. He championed peace and was felled by violence. He was a man of principle, and a flawed human.

King pushed America to confront its contradictory truths. That may be why I feel most American on his day.

I recently finished Nisi Shawl's intriguing steampunk sci-fi novel 'Everfair', about a Congo that might have been.

Shawl's fiction was especially intriguing after the nonfiction I read before writing a magazine article on Ota Benga, the young Congolese man brought  to the United  States and displayed next to the ape house at the Bronx Zoo at the start of the 20th century.

I watched Veterans Trauma Court Judge David Shakes press a young former soldier convicted of drug charges who had missed a series of urine tests. The judge said he had information the vet was using drugs again.

“I don’t know where you’d get that kind of information,’’ the vet said.

Shakes, a former Army judge advocate, just looked at him. After a moment, the young man started spilling. He was using marijuana and meth. He also said he had bought a gun.

“The plan was to shoot myself. But I didn’t follow through.”

“Where’s the gun now?” Shakes said evenly.

“I got rid of it. It’s probably hot.”

“That’s another crime in and of itself. And one the district attorney takes very seriously,” Shakes said. He asked why the man had not yet completed the eight hours of community service he had ordered last time he saw him.

“I suck.”

“We are really concerned about you,” the judge said. “You are going to go to jail.”