The late South African artist David Koloane once told me: "Being born in South Africa, I know no other country. And I don't think I can love any other country as much as I love the country where I was born and where my ancestors were born."

He expressed that love by looking closely and with great empathy, then translating what he saw onto canvas. 

The truth is, we need fiction.

A Vietnam-era novel about World War II veterans has lessons for our War on Terror times.

I’m not sure how many people in Denver are aware of the camping ban and of the bid to repeal it that will appear on ballots that soon will be landing in mail boxes. I wonder whether, unless you’re a journalist or a politician, it’s just too early to be paying attention.

Like many of the military veterans I met in Montrose, the managing director of Lincoln Hills Cares is at ease when he is helping.

I left a meeting feeling optimistic our open society can stay open. If nothing else, I was reminded we live in an age when technology again and again frustrates the powerful’s tendency toward secrecy at the expense of the weak.

A graduate student working on a paper on the sad history of black education in South Africa reached out to me after reading my first book, “It’s a Black-White Thing.” Among her questions:

“How do we move forward without having the past always present?”