ArcaMax

Today it's clear that the economy is not doing well. Gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 1.5% in the first quarter of 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and inflation is at a 40-year high.

What we do know is that consumers are feeling the burden of rising prices, and there are still supply chain issues ...Read more

I've often told my children that the most important decision they will ever make is whom they marry. For those of us blessed to have children, the decision has an impact that goes beyond who will love, comfort, honor and keep us (as the Episcopal Church vows state).

It includes who will be a role model to our children, who will help provide for...Read more

We lived in Belgium in the late 1960s while my father researched for his dissertation. I was too young to remember, but my mother told me that, while traveling in France, we were greeted by a standing ovation at a restaurant because we were Americans, and American troops had freed their city from Nazi control a few decades before.

That ovation ...Read more

May is graduation month. Students, parents and friends celebrate the end of one process and the start of another. Once we finish with our formal education, we often forget that our learning should not end. Lifelong learning is critical, and I hope that this column will serve as a reminder that we all have something more to learn. Think of this, ...Read more

This Sunday is Mother's Day, and as I did last week in my column, I will write again about my mother, Jackie Battley Gingrich, who died in 2013 yet remains a living inspiration to me.

This week, I am writing about a different aspect to this remarkable woman. Even before she was diagnosed with cancer for the second time in 2004, she knew that ...Read more

Next weekend is Mother's Day, which of course reminds me of my mother, Jackie Battley Gingrich, who died in 2013. So forgive me if I spend the next two weeks writing about her -- and why her views still matter to me. She was a polio survivor, finished college in three years (the first in her family to do so); she was a math major at Auburn ...Read more

The never-ending media outrage machine is undoubtedly focusing on the next soon-to-be crisis and amplifying anything that could possibly pit one of us against the other. Outrage drives ratings up, but it also drives people apart. I've been focusing instead on causes that bring people together. Since this Friday we celebrate the 52nd annual Earth...Read more

"It's the economy, stupid," is the infamous mantra conceived by Democratic political consultant James Carville that underscored the main issue driving the 1992 presidential race. A few months later, Bill Clinton replaced George H.W. Bush as president; it was the voters' focus on the economy that put Clinton in the White House. While this year is...Read more

The news swirling around us this week is about the war in Ukraine, the variability in the stock market, the rapid increase in the rate of inflation and the continuing issues related to the supply chain. It's too easy to be drawn into the news and confusion of the day, to respond on Twitter or to lash out at others due to fear and uncertainty.

...Read more

You're not the only one noticing the higher prices at the gas pump and in the grocery store. In addition to rising prices, the war in Ukraine is on a constant loop on news channels, providing additional events to worry about -- events that we cannot control. Even those few who were watching the Oscars for entertainment could not get away from ...Read more