Author Archives: Doug Cumming

History Division 2017 Business Meeting Minutes, Chicago (Printed in Clio Among the Media, Fall 2017, pp. 5-8) By Erika Pribanic-Smith, University of Texas-Arlington Vice Chair/Research Chair Outgoing Chair Mike Sweeney (Ohio) called the meeting to order at 7 p.m. on … Continue reading →

A terrible premonition dawns on my Democratic friends: Their party could fail to win either the House or the Senate this November. An even darker vexation follows: Trump is re-elected in 2020 (after winning the Nobel Peace Prize). My wife, … Continue reading →

Last July on the Lower East Side of New York, I was draining the ice cubes of my second cocktail at Schiller’s Liquor Bar on Rivington Street when I fell into a trance. Rivington himself seemed conjured up from the … Continue reading →

Yes I guess the gate of heaven is everywhere. But you had to see on your cellphone in the dark that the train would be two hours late turning us three back home at exactly the right moment so that … Continue reading →

Confederate symbols in churches, especially Episcopal churches in Virginia and the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., have followed a pattern of controversy parallel to, but distinct from, the civic battles over their removal from public spaces. In Episcopal churches directly … Continue reading →

Fake news was real. There really were a bunch of teenagers in a former Communist city in the former Yugoslavia cranking out confections with tabloid-headlines quoting fake FBI sources saying Hillary Clinton was about to be indicted, or whatever. Kids … Continue reading →

Story and photos by Doug Cumming NEW YORK — An abandoned synagogue that for 120 years housed New York’s oldest Eastern European Jewish congregation was not noticed much – until it lit up the sky last May. The flames that pillared … Continue reading →

The tourists sitting in rows on the top deck of the docked Circle Line Manhattan waited to be entertained, and at $41 per adult ticket, $27 for children, it better be good. “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls,” a brassy … Continue reading →

A class exercise, after viewing White House news conference of July 11. Photos and story by Doug Cumming President Trump, who had repeatedly dismissed “the Russia thing” as a hoax and sour grapes, faced dramatic evidence to the contrary yesterday. … Continue reading →