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?”

Susurrthump. That’s the sound of the holidays.

On a single day, two stories I wrote received very different reactions.

I visited a VA hospital. And came away with some lessons in collaboration and creativity that should be kept in mind as America seeks to improve care for its vets.

After writing “Home of the Brave,” I concluded I would have to have the audacity of a veteran who has seen war to imagine a world at peace.

Dalton Trumbo’s genius was helping us to visualize what wars really mean, and to understand it will take courage and imagination to end them.

By setting “Oklahoma” in an African-American town for his Denver Center for the Performing Arts production, artistic director Chris Coleman makes the show even more deeply American.