Danny Heitman

1 week ago | theadvocate.com | Danny Heitman

When The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg arrived in Louisiana last month to speak at the New Orleans Book Festival, he needed no introduction. Even those who don’t read his magazine have come to know about Goldberg, who became part of a national controversy when he was accidentally included on messages shared by members of the Trump administration while they planned military strikes in Yemen. Wiser people have already covered that issue, which I won’t rehash here.

2 weeks ago | wsj.com | Danny Heitman

‘We reach for soap that is created for us by a Frenchman. The towel is provided by a Turk.’As a trade war unfolds across the world, Americans might want to revisit a message about global commerce that Martin Luther King Jr. shared more than six decades ago. King, the legendary champion of American civil rights, was also concerned with the ties that bound him to those living everywhere.

2 weeks ago | neh.gov | Danny Heitman

One day in 1830, Frederick Douglass bought a book that changed his life. Douglass, then known as Frederick Bailey, was a twelve-year-old child enslaved in Baltimore. After hearing a group of white boys recite from The Columbian Orator, a grade-school textbook for teaching rhetoric, Douglass decided to get a copy for himself. Against stiff odds for slaves of the time, he learned to read, and words were his prevailing passion.

2 weeks ago | theadvocate.com | Danny Heitman

I have my late friend and fellow journalist Relma Hargus to thank for introducing me to cedar waxwings many years ago. You might already know about these beautiful birds, which are most visible in Louisiana in late winter and early spring. They’re about as big as cardinals, mostly olive and bright yellow, with red wing tips that resemble wax and inspire their funny nickname. The most striking feature is the black bandit mask across their eyes, fitting for a bird that loves to plunder.

3 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Danny Heitman

In the newsroom where I began my writing career nearly four decades ago, a vintage front page hung on the wall. The old newspaper carried the story of the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, its banner headline set off by an exclamation point. That bold punctuation, which greeted me each morning as I walked to my desk, was meant as the exception rather than the rule in the work I was assigned to do. Journalists, I was reminded, should keep calm, especially when the world hummed with portent.