Greetings from the Executive Director: April 2020

It would not be an exaggeration to say that our way of life has, in many ways, been irrevocably upended by the Covid-19 pandemic. From now on, in addition to the already-routine metal detectors and bag and body searches when boarding trains and airplanes (that were...

Ruminations by John McGlynn: Not a Finite Commodity

It’s hot in Jakarta today with the noontime temperature around 32 Celsius and, what with everyone ordered to stay within the confines of their homes due to the Covid-19 virus running amok worldwide, it appears from media reports that this situation has given rise to...

Ruminations by John McGlynn: Memories of Disease

Born in 1952, I have no direct memory of the 1918 “Spanish Flu” pandemic that took the lives of up to 100 million people. My memory of that disease is a borrowed one from my Aunt Molly who told me the story of how Great Aunt Jo, a baby nurse who worked for wealthy...

Ruminations by John McGlynn: Underclass

In September 1970 when I began college at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, it was as a Fine Arts and Theater major—a choice for which I was underprepared, especially when compared to my classmates, all of whom had graduated from large urban schools where a...