Everyone’s an expert now. Ain’t that so? Well, at least everyone has an expert sitting in his cellphone. Ask a question. Any question, really. What team won the 1946 Negro Leagues World Series? What led to the 1915 war in Gallipoli? Where’s Gallipoli anyway? How do I shed 10 pounds of blubber around my waistline? How do I save for

It’s good to make some noise now and then, but what noise you make ought to be worth people’s time to hear. And there has been a lot of the latter about Tuskegee University and its decision to reset policies about a couple of matters, which include how students dress. Tuskegee President Mark A. Brown declared bonnets, du-rags and pajamas

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The second I stepped onto Flight DL69 for what would turn into an exhausting trip here — first, I had hours-long layovers in Seattle and Minneapolis — I kept thinking about what awaited me. I was leaving staid Cleveland for a bustling metropolis with a loose understanding of how dissimilar this island nation was from anywhere else I’d

I suspect cultural anthropologists of a certain age look back now and swear something awful happened to their music. They probably say their tastes got hijacked between the 1970s and the millennium. But I can tell them precisely what was taken: real voices, real instruments and, well, real talent. More than 50 years ago, Baby Boomers turned up the volume on

FRANKFURT, Germany — I was starving. I’d been in this business-centric city about eight hours, and I hadn’t eaten since dinner on the jetliner six hours earlier. I’d opted to skip the breakfast I had available to me. So, by 7:15 p.m., I’d already scouted various places that seemed tempting to a foodie — or, as nobody else calls me,

I think historic League Park has no future as long as Councilwoman Stephanie Howse-Jones has a say. What Howse-Jones knows about ballparks and baseball can’t fill a thimble. She made that fact plain to me last month at a community meeting in her ward. I asked her point blank what Parks and Recreation, the city department that runs League Park,

I always think it’s unwise to put too high an expectation on others, because when I do, I’ll often come away disappointed. I made that mistake with the Poetry Slam, which I teamed with my brother and nephew to hold at John Hay High School last month. Now, others played a role in supporting the spoken-word skills of 10 teenagers,

I’d call it easy to tell somebody else what to do with his life, because the advice brings no consequences to you. Then again, the person you’re telling what to do has zero obligation to heed you. That’s the case with Black athletes whom the NAACP and high-profile activists like Dr. Harry Edwards are urging to boycott football programs in

I hate waste, particularly when the waste is the result of governmental indifference. In Cleveland, the best example of that waste is League Park, which the city used over $6.3 million to save from demolition. The ballpark would be history like Shibe Park, Ebbets Field and Crosley Field if not for the hardheadedness of Councilwoman Fannie Lewis, who dreamed of

I found so little I agreed with Charlie Kirk about that I’m reluctant to mention him or point to anything he said. Kirk held a perspective that ran counter to mine, but he had something to say, whether I disagreed with it him or not. He was right about one thing, though: America ought not be meddling in the affairs

We’ve finished the first semester of 2025-26 academic year, but we still find ourselves struggling to fix what the covid crisis wrought for students. Ask almost anybody in the education biz, and they’ll tell you straightaway: Students have learned less since the pandemic. While we applauded efforts to keep students on track, we must  boo the results of remote instruction.

People with good hearts have stayed in the background. They’ve tried to distance themselves from the political chaos, because, I reckon, they felt the chaos in America would resolve itself. They were wrong. Our democracy is in disarray, and men with the loudest megaphones and the most money are steering it toward fascism or whatever horrific governance they want to

I suppose I can put my frustration in storage now that I know I’m not the lone person who sees the Cleveland Metropolitan School District as a public institution where sound ideas go to get ignored. Its leadership must think institutional inertia is golden. It isn’t. It is, however, a reflection of indifference or incompetence. Those are the only choices

I know millions of TV viewers watched last May as a seventh-grader from Plano, Texas, won the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee, spelling éclaircissement to secure the title. Faizan Zaki’s mastery of words like “promyshleennikor,” “autochthonous” and “insouciant” show the remarkable results that come from a true commitment to one’s craft. Faizan’s triumph should remind us of the incredible talent

I lived in Detroit in the 1980s, and I’ll admit I liked the city. At the time, nobody called it “the Comeback City.” It was “Crime City, USA,” but it had assets that made the place livable, which included verdant Belle Isle. That ’80s image began to change when, surprisingly, people took those assets and put them to better use.