How to account for the human cost of climate change

By Dan Weeks & Dr. Sindiso Mnisi Weeks Our children have a rambunctious streak. When their seemingly endless energy exceeds their not-so-endless judgment, things tend to break or get damaged. As parents, our job is to help them understand that actions have consequences. When one of them damages the family ukulele or kicks a soccer…

Israel-Palestine: In search of our shared humanity

By Dan Weeks Like so many people around the world, my family has been quietly mourning the unspeakable suffering of Israelis and Palestinians since Oct. 7. On that day, which will live in infamy as Israel’s 9/11, Hamas terrorists from the occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza murdered some 1,400 Israelis, both civilians and soldiers, and took hundreds…

Will America ever be a meritocracy?

When I was in high school and starting to think about college, my father told me a story about a wealthy family we knew. The parents had decided their son should attend Dartmouth College and made a $100,000 donation in advance of his application. But his academic credentials were too far off the mark and…

The persistent and pernicious gender pay gap

Call me biased, but my daughter is clever as can be. She’s devouring chapter books and spelling up a storm at the age of 6, long before I learned to read and write. If she gets tired of her brothers buzzing around her as noisy make-believe planes and trains, all she has to do is…

How racism hurts us all, including racists

An accomplished chef settles in New Hampshire. He breathes new life into an old diner in a struggling downtown district. Mindful of his context, he maintains the former menus and decor. The chef is “Black” but the food and vibe he is serving are “white.” Things are going fine. Five months later, in April of…

Serena Williams: The power, and danger, of a single story

By Dan Weeks and Dr. Sindiso Mnisi Weeks Earlier this month, we joined with millions of other sports fans in watching Serena Williams play the final match of her dazzling tennis career at the U.S. Open. We ooh’d and ahh’d as she served up 11 aces to her opponent’s three, adding to her record stockpile of…

COVID in Black and White: A Juneteenth Reflection

“When white folks catch a cold, Black folks get pneumonia.” We’ve known this old adage for years but never before did it strike so close to home as it did last month when COVID finally caught up with our interracial family. First, a little background. Since the global pandemic began in March of 2020, my…

Don’t whitewash history at our children’s expense

By Dan Weeks & Dr. Sindiso Mnisi Weeks This month, the New Hampshire Department of Education under Commissioner Frank Edelblut released four 3-minute videos which, it claimed, “provide a robust and complete story of American history and the Black American experience.” The taxpayer-funded videos were created in partnership with “1776 Unites,” a collection of essays in the conservative Washington…

Will we teach our children facts or fear?

On a recent afternoon drive through Jefferson, New Hampshire, with the majestic Presidential Range in view, my ever-inquisitive 5-year-old son wanted to know about our nation’s third president. I paused and recalled what I had learned about Thomas Jefferson as a boy some 30 years ago. I thought of the towering bronze statue of Jefferson,…

It’s never too late, or too soon, to do the right thing

“Never give in charity what is owed in justice.” – Pope John XXIII We Americans are a generous people. According to the National Philanthropic Trust, we gave over $300 billion to charity as individuals in 2020. That’s nearly 2 percent of our nation’s GDP. And we are not just generous with our treasure: nearly one in…