In 1972, I worked in a hard-bitten, racially divided Southeast Texas town 25 miles east of Houston. The racial divide in Crosby, Texas, was U.S. Highway 90. If you were black, you lived south of the highway in Barrett Station. White Crosby lived north of the highway. Highway 90 was also an economic dividing line, […]

Read more

In August 2011, the City Council of Boulder, Colorado, referred two ballot measures to voters. One authorized the city to take over (or “municipalize”) the privately owned utility that provides Boulder’s electricity. The second measure imposed a modest tax on ratepayers to finance the takeover and convert the utility from coal to natural gas. With […]

Read more

While disasters like hurricanes and floods are better remembered, heat waves cause more fatalities annually than all other natural disasters combined. Close to 800 people died in Chicago alone during a searing heat wave in 1995. As our fossil-fuel orgy drives the earth’s temperature upward, extreme-heat events will become more common, say researchers. A study […]

Read more

Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still. (while Whitey’s on the moon) —Gil Scott-Heron, “Whitey on the Moon” (1970) It’s been exactly forty years since “Whitey” last set foot on the moon. It’s harder than ever to pay those bills. On the other hand, there are no more “Whiteys” on the moon. Happy now? […]

Read more

So asks a Brooklyn teenager in the question at the heart of Tracie McMillan’s ambitious The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table. Writers on food rarely focus on why people eat what they do when their choices are scant. McMillan, a journalist who has long covered a […]

Read more