The pundits and TV talking heads have recently bandied about a relatively new term, “asymmetrical war.” As it suggests, this refers to a conflict in which one of the combatants is militarily far stronger than the other. The term was created in 1975 by the late political scientist Andrew J. R. Mack, whose seminal essay […]
Gerry Goldstein
Gerry Goldstein, an occasional contributor to What's Up, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist who has been writing for Rhode Island newspapers and magazines for 60 years
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Gerry Goldstein: A pox on curses
I owe Jason Varitek a poem. Driven by the curse of a brain cramp the size of Fenway Park, I attributed his recent bad luck, in getting fired from his Red Sox coaching job, to another significant Sox catcher, Carlton Fisk. I wondered why, in a mass firing related to the sacking of Manager Alex […]
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Gerry Goldstein: These ‘smiths’ worked the forge of language
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light… I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams: I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. That poem,which so touchingly captures the vulnerability of love, is by […]
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Gerry Goldstein: In Trump’s era, who’s the real crackpot?
Psychologically speaking, I am off-kilter. I suffer from a variety of maladies, including tyrannophobia, authoritophobia, politicophobia, and TAD. Coincidentally (or not), these conditions arose concurrently with the ascendance of His Royal Vileness, Donald J. Trump, to the highest office in our land. That’s where TAD –Trump Anxiety Disorder – comes in. Never before have I […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Among blossoms of spring, giving dandelions their due
Many consider it a pesky weed, but there are life lessons to be learned from the lowly dandelion, soon to pop up on suburban lawns. There it will be mowed down, pulled up, and otherwise dispatched as unwelcome. But despite its reputation as a bothersome guest, the dandelion has attributes many of us should envy, […]
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Gerry Goldstein: A need for saintly intervention
On March 17th we can mark not just the day honoring St. Patrick, who in legend drove the snakes out of Ireland, but also the 250th anniversary of the day George Washington drove the British out of Boston. While St. Patrick’s achievement is largely mythic, General Washington’s is real. It’s considered the first major victory […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Best of A.I. must spring from ourselves
In 1995, inventor and entrepreneur Robert Metcalfe wrote a magazine column in which he predicted the Internet “will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 will collapse.” If that didn’t happen, he vowed, “I’ll eat my words.” When instead of collapsing the Internet surged, Metcalfe kept his promise. At a conference in 1997, he put […]
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Gerry Goldstein: ‘Honest Abe’ refused some heavy handouts
Abraham Lincoln was a chump. Oh, that’s not my opinion, but in one respect it seems to be Donald Trump’s. As we have learned, Qatar gave Trump a $400 million Boeing 747 for use as a new Air Force One. When he leaves office, he said, he plans to transfer the aircraft, which some describe […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Overhead, a reflection of who we are
The Civil War was new in 1861 when Brooklyn’s 14th Regiment, soon bound for battle, heard these words from abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher: “A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation’s flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself.” That’s still food for thought in 2026, as this American prepares to exchange his wind-worn […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Stretching the truth, for good and for evil
Our government recently reported performing a “double tap” in September on a boat suspected of transporting drugs in the Caribbean. This was some tap – two missile strikes that instantly killed nine men and then blew apart two survivors clinging to the wreckage. So there, in the words of “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth, we have the deployment […]
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Gerry Goldstein: A dose of good medicine, free
An ancient Jewish proverb asserts, “As soap is to the body, so laughter is to the soul.” As we anticipate the start of a new year after an old one fraught with dysfunction, this provides us grist for a crucial resolution: to make time for laughter. The soap analogy is particularly fitting for our time, […]
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Gerry Goldstein: A dissent from the ‘Silent Generation’
I don’t know about you, but I keep getting my generations mixed up. That’s easy to do these days, what with pop culture references constantly bombarding us with the opinions and preferences of people belonging to Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z. Throw in Millennials, Gen Alpha and Gen Beta and I’m lost in […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Parallels too frightening to ignore
In a democracy, citizens are guaranteed certain rights, and we can read them just as they appear in the Constitution: – Political power emanates from the people. – All…are equal before the law. – Officials are servants of the whole community and not of a party. But wait: Those guarantees are taken not from our own […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Rules of the road into battle
An irony about humanity is that while we tend to slaughter one another in barbaric wars, we are directed, as supposedly civilized creatures, to follow certain rules on the killing fields. In meetings from the Hague to Geneva dating from early in the last century, guidelines have developed not on whether we should kill, but […]
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Gerry Goldstein: A supermarket special: Thoughts to chew on
Teaching moments pop up often, but sometimes they vanish too quickly for us to learn the intended lesson. So it was recently at the supermarket entrance, where a 10-year-old girl stood beside a sign hand-lettered in red crayon, asking for donations so she could pay for dance lessons. With her mother sitting expressionless behind […]
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Gerry Goldstein: A nation where words truly matter
I hate that Charlie Kirk was mercilessly shot down. But I also hate some poisonous ideas he embraced and sought to sow among our nation’s youth. So there, in the words right above, may be “hate speech.” And if Pam Bondi thinks so, it could be enough to get me collared. At least, that’s how […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Truth, unvarnished as it gets
Our dictatorial president, determined to erase any hint of American history that offends his relentless jingoism, could learn a lot from the day 70 years ago when they buried an affable 14-year-old boy in Chicago. A horrific series of events began when, visiting relatives in Mississippi, he walked into a grocery store to buy bubble […]
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Gerry Goldstein: For better or worse, A.I. bronzes Brady
Whenever a new statue is unveiled, you can be sure opinion will divide on whether it hits the mark. And that’s been the case since the Patriots recently introduced their new iteration of legendary Tom Brady, a bronze colossus that with its five-foot base stands 17 feet tall. The image by Massachusetts sculptor Jeff Buccacio, […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Yearning for the sound of silence
It is 2 a.m., and the household is blissfully and restfully asleep. Suddenly, filtered though the haze of sleep and dreams, comes a familiar and unwelcome whisper: Chirp. Maybe it’s just imagination; wait a few moments. And then: Chirp! When a third chirp follows, all grounds for denial evaporate: These are the dreaded overnight announcements that the […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Rendering unto a modern-day Caesar
As if he has not already demeaned the American presidency, the current incumbent says that to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday next year he will bring to the White House a mixed martial arts fight. Thoughtful of him to provide us opportunity, on that notable occasion for our fragile democracy, to watch two people batter […]
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When words desert us, we ❤️ the alternative
We are long past July’s iconic holiday, the Fourth, but coming up on the 17th is one of lesser reputation that could easily make you 😃. That’s right; we are approaching World Emoji Day, a time to celebrate the little characters and symbols that let us wordlessly communicate our feelings. The media site National Today, which tracks […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Some oddball nicknames updated on diamond
Baseball great Shoeless Joe Jackson made news recently when he and others who had been banned from the sport for life were posthumously reinstated by Commissioner Rob Manfred. That makes Jackson eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Whether he gets in – his .356 career batting average puts him fourth among all-time leaders – […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Chiseling away at liberty’s bedrock
A centuries-old promise: No free man shall be taken or imprisoned…or exiled, or in any way ruined,…except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. There’s irony in that pledge, given that we’re witnessing men and women, including a physician at Brown University, summarily scooped up and deported without […]
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Gerry Goldstein: A ‘square’ navigates cool new slang
In a recent newspaper obituary, a daughter described her late mother thusly: “She was a dope mom.” A dope? Well, hardly. A little research reveals that “dope,” as used by youth these days, is a replacement for what my much older generation would say was “cool.” So I suppose this makes me, in contemporary parlance of […]
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Gerry Goldstein: Holiday time, for short stanzas that rhyme
A limerick is funny, but terse, A short and succinct piece of verse. In only five lines The humor it mines Runs from ribald to bawdy to worse. So there you have my home-made contribution to one of the least known May holidays, which arrives each year on the 12th: National Limerick Day. The date […]