We sat an outdoor platform in Nassjo, Sweden, awaiting the train that would take us to Arlanda Airport in Stockholm for our return flight to Texas. I had attended a professional conference there, and my wife had explored the city more thoroughly than my time allowed. Afterwards, we explored Scandinavia, wandering to Gothenburg, Copenhagen, and to my great-grandparents birthplaces in Smaland in Central Sweden. The morning train from Växjö to Nassjo had lasted about an hour, and we were enjoying the late summer afternoon, only to be interrupted by a barrage of text messages.

“You should call or text someone about your house; horrible flooding and people evacuating” The texts were variations on that theme. My brother returned my call with news that “things didn’t look good.” Anxiety prevailed for 24 hours. It was worse than we feared, damage that 18 inches of standing water would produce; outdoor furniture washed downstream, never to be seen; damaged photographs and pictures stored in closets, never to be hung; papers in our study drawers, illegible by mud stains.

Dear Senator Cruz, 

While millions of people across the world were marching to demand the end of the Gaza genocide, you were shaking hands with Crime Minister Netanyahu and busy criticizing a kid rapper at a foreign festival that we have never heard of in a country which is on the other side of the ocean since they dared to criticize a third country (Israel) that is thousands of miles away!

While your home state of Texas was going through a catastrophic flood where over 100 people were dead, injured, and missing, you were busy criticizing a rapper in the U.K. who dared to criticize a third country (Israel) for killing women and children every day during the last 20 months. How does that benefit the people of Texas?

How can an American Senator condone and defend Israel's genocide killing Palestinian civilians including children, babies and starve the rest... where are your American values gone?

(1) Facebook

The holiday weekend’s smoke has cleared from the summer sky, but a different kind of haze lingers over cities like Columbus. It is the acrid aftermath of a celebration scarred by gunfire, a pall that hangs over communities trying to reconcile the promise of America’s birthday with the reality of its violence.

On the South Side at a house party that should have been filled with the sounds of summer, the life of 17-year-old Cameron Moore was extinguished. His death was one of at least six youth fatalities in a five-day span that saw 25 other young people wounded in shootings across America.

One of Ohio’s most common stigmas is that our drivers are amongst the worst in the nation.

And while data shows that the state’s motor vehicle deaths per capita are relatively low compared to the rest of the country, the empirical issue stems from a gradual increase in vehicular violence since 2013.