The just society and knowledge economy now towering on the post-pandemic horizon

In the classical Greek myth, Pandora opened her infamous box, releasing death, destruction and untold suffering into the world, much like a virus called COVID-19. But then she closed it as quickly as she could, and she trapped inside one remaining human attribute.  This was hope.  Throughout this series on my journey through a pandemic, I’ve sought to be candid about my own experience, through the phases...

As the fog at last lifts, the future begins to arrive much sooner than we ever expected

Acceptance is not surrender. That idea seems such a clear aphorism. Accepting what we cannot change and summoning the courage to change what we can is, after all, among the wisdom that binds all the ancient scriptures, from the Talmud to the Bhagavad Gita to the Gospels. But making this distinction, through the early days of paralyzing fear, into the moments of euphoria wrought by early success,...

As the pandemic becomes more dire, a fog of sorrow coils around life amid COVID-19

If the fear phase of my pandemic journey fused suddenly, and if the state of euphoria came as the crest of a wave, the third stage of depression arrived more like fog rolling in, a malaise that crept upon me slowly. As I suggested in my first essay, the catalyst of the cancellation of the SXSW festival made the reality of the pandemic stark and ushered...

Spotting the new horizon after weeks of ‘Dead Reckoning’ through the pandemic storm

We doubledowned on Slack to get random eyeballs on problems. We raised the synchronous sharing of Google Docs and Sheets to an art form. We invited customers, partners, investors, and board members to join us more regularly on Google Meet or Zoom, to help lift the wind in our sails It was the eve of the last day in April, the end of the first quarter...

A new flu-like virus distant, abstract and then suddenly… ‘This is real, this is bad’

Leadership in the time of COVID-19 - A CEO’s journey Fear, euphoria, depression, acceptance, and imagining what lies beyond Part I of V: Fear It was late in the afternoon of March 6. A month or so of headlines had focused on this strange new virus emerging in China’s Wuhan province, killing the then-staggering number of 3,000 -- almost all of the victims in that country. The movie...

Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz once stood up to Donald Trump — they need to do so again for our democracy

The 2016 Republican Party Iowa Caucus results gave us a preview of how Donald Trump responds to an election loss. In the afterglow of what the Des Moines Register referred to as GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s  “unexpected smackdown” of then-candidate Trump, @realDonaldTrump took to Twitter to accuse the senator of fraud.  “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it,” reads the tweet. In a subsequent tweet, Trump...

‘Caste,’ an election and the resonance of racism below the surface of liberal, progressive America

Review: Caste– The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson, 2020, 475 pp., Random House As the razor-edged finale to a presidential election riven by ambiguity reaches its conclusion, one overarching reality will endure in stark clarity: the bi-polar, cultural disease dividing America into two angry and unforgiving camps. Rivers of words diagnosing the malady are fast becoming analytical torrents. Recrimination and reaction to its implications are beginning and...

When That Day Comes

We’re waiting for the day when we can say, it’s over, foreverWe’re tired of all the lies, and all the guys who’ve gone to jail for himWe’ll celebrate the day he slinks away to Mar a Lago, or whereverAnd saves us from the unacceptable behavior of someone so dimHis narcissistic mind will have to find another victim, when we evict himThe bigotry will fall just...

How Texas rebuffed billions in ACA aid to insure the poor, and how Austin and other cities could fix it

The Affordable Care Act, or ACA, the signature policy of President Barack Obama’s administration, was the culmination of nearly a century of contentious policy battles over health reform in the United States. The future of the sweeping ACA – with implications for the health care of millions in Texas and the nation -- remains acutely uncertain. The ACA will face a direct challenge in the Supreme...

By Allergy and Allegory

There is a ghostland somewhere near Of spirits of the Earth And aging oxygenated dirt And there is hope and there is hate But no one ever shows up late