My sister had a barbershop quartet perform for my grandparents

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Peace AND Safety

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  It won’t surprise any of you that I’ve been struggling with this war over Israel. In some ways, I’ve been struggling over it my whole life, just as the world has been struggling over it for generations. To me, it goes beyond the need for a homeland. It is a matter of peace versus safety. I want both. This weekend, I considered going to New York City for a visit with some friends. I don’t feel safe doing so. The protests at colleges like Columbia and NYU are threatening not just to Israelis but to Jews, and they are not threatening just to Jews but also to humanity. Recent protesters have threatened that “October 7th will happen to American Jewish students 10,000 times over,” and Jewish people have been told to return to Europe or Poland. Professors have been blocked from entering buildings, and students have been forcibly blocked from entering their dorms. This is an assault to the very essence of what America represents. My own house, once, was sprayed with sw...
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I have always appreciated a good play on words, a playful rhyme, and a clever slogan.  When I first heard the phrase "Keep Calm and Carry On", it seemed much better than my younger sister's pleas to me to "Chill" or even "Chillax."  It doesn't surprise me that hundreds or even thousands of spoofs have been made on this British phrase from the 1940s.   Below, you will see simply the first page of Google images from today's search for "Keep calm and".  The possibilities are endless, even if the off-rhyme of "calm" and "on" gets lost in the variations.  By now, "Keep Calm and" has become a quintessential meme for the 21st century. What is less popular, however, is the history of this phrase.  Here is where I grow uncomfortable. In the days leading up to the second World War,  the British Ministry of Information created several propaganda posters to help boost morale in the case of a German invasion...
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