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Approach today having learned the lessons of the past

It’s a time for fear. The United States is engaged in an undeclared war — one of which the public does not understand the true extent. The president has gone in without Congressional approval. Military leaders struggle with cabinet members, politicians and themselves about whether and how to proceed. Weary soldiers, sailors and airmen want to finish their jobs and come home. Inflation and energy volatility have put the squeeze on everyday Americans, who are struggling financially, while the wealthy float along in a protective cocoon. A new and frighteningly powerful ...

Dear Annie: Courtesy is required in shared spaces

Dear Annie: I go to the same nail salon every few weeks, and lately I’ve noticed something that is driving me crazy. Almost every time I’m there, someone is talking loudly on their cellphone, watching videos without headphones or having a FaceTime conversation while the rest of us are trying to relax. At my last appointment, the woman next to me spent nearly the entire hour on speakerphone discussing everything from her marriage to her daughter’s problems at school. The nail technicians seemed uncomfortable, but no one said anything. I didn’t want to be rude or too ...

Reader inquires about a new product for inflammatory arthritis

DEAR DR. ROACH: I was really interested in reading your recent columns on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other inflammatory arthritic conditions. I’ve taken most medications that you mentioned in your column. However, there’s a product called PS372424 that’s been in research since 2014, yet no medical rheumatology departments have even involved patients in taking it. This is a nontoxic alternative to all the medications that are given to children and adults for inflammatory arthritic diseases. I’m in the United Kingdom, but I’d be really interested to hear what our American ...

What’s in a name?

As part of Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada that the administration claims isn’t a trade war, the president has signed an executive order, renaming Lake Ontario, “Lake America.” This follows his renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” These childish antics help no one, but Trump is not alone in changing names for political and woke purposes. There is a long road in Northern Virginia that for years has been called “Lee Highway.” It passes through Arlington and Fairfax counties. Arlington County politicians decided they didn’t like Confederate General ...

What a Stalin biography tells us about our time

History illuminates the present. I’ve been reading Stephen Kotkin’s widely and justly praised multivolume biography of Joseph Stalin and have encountered many passages that illuminate the present. I learned, for example, that Stalin met the exiled Vladimir Lenin more than a decade before the October 1917 revolution, and that by the early 1920s until his death in 1924, Lenin was in failing health, confined to an estate with “a staff, including the worker-cook Spiridon Putin,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grandfather. That provides an interesting context for Vladimir ...

Dear Annie: Leave your worries for tomorrow

Dear Readers: Wishing you all a very happy Labor Day. The expectation of this holiday is to take the day off, put our feet up and enjoy the last stretch of summer. How many of you are actually able to take the time to reset and rest today? We say we are going to relax, and then we answer a few emails. We clean the kitchen. We run to the grocery store. We start thinking about everything that needs to happen in September. Before we know it, our day off has turned into another day of checking things off a list. Maybe this Labor Day, we can try something different. Ralph Waldo ...