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Who remembers Oliver?

Columns

I still listen to Oliver Anthony. He was the rednecky guy who played guitar outdoors with bugs and dogs. His songs are mournful and angry, lamenting his struggles with addiction, his poverty and the changes in America. In his song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” welfare queens on one side and a Washington elite on the other were wasting his life. The song became what Fox News called “The Conservative National Anthem.” Biden was president then. They even played a bit of it at the first Republican debates in August of 2023. The politicians appeared a bit mystified when asked to ...

Why only 13% of surplus food gets donated by US supermarkets and other retailers to help hungry people — and how food pantries are trying to gather more

Columns

Low-income Americans need more help getting enough to eat, but not much of the food retailers that sell groceries could potentially donate is given away. Only 13% of it ends up at food banks, according to a 2026 report produced by ReFED, a nonprofit that studies and tries to prevent food waste. The rest is composted; turned into animal feed, biofuels and other industrial products; sold at a deep discount shortly before its use-by date; or disposed of in landfills and incinerators. Given that millions of Americans are losing access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ...

Young malnourished man experiences constant intestinal pain

Columns

DEAR DR. ROACH: My son, who is 28, has always had issues with his gut. Almost everything passes through his intestines quickly. He frequently sees undigested vegetables in his stool. He had intestinal pain and underwent upper and lower GI scopes because the doctor suspected Crohn’s or inflammatory bowel disease. But he found nothing other than inflammation in his stomach, for which he ordered Protonix; this helped with the pain. His BMI is below 18 and has always been this way. He says that if he eats healthy, it makes his gut worse, and if he eats fast food or other non-healthy ...

Dear Annie: One parent’s dream, another’s heartbreak

Columns

Dear Annie: My husband and I are in a painful disagreement about our children’s education. He went to boarding school as a teenager and says it was one of the best things that ever happened to him. He talks about the independence, friendships, the sports, the teachers and the confidence it gave him. I did not go to boarding school. I grew up coming home every day to my parents, eating dinner at our kitchen table and being part of the ordinary rhythm of family life. To me, sending our children away at 14 or 15 feels heartbreaking. I know boarding school can be wonderful for some kids, ...

Birthright citizenship is not just for immigrants

Columns

Now that we’ve completed our celebration of America’s 250th birthday, it’s time to prepare for the 300th — the tricentennial. I will not live to see it, but I hope the nation will. At least, I hope a certain kind of America will celebrate its 300th year — one that has regained its moral equilibrium and turned its back resoundingly on illiberalism in all its ugly forms. If the United States does not reverse its current retreat from the principles and traditions that ennobled it, if it becomes the kind of predatory, grubby and aggressive nation that Donald Trump champions, or ...

If you don’t love the World Cup, you haven’t heard the right story

Columns

At this point, my family members are accustomed to my weird European sporting interests. Short of watching “Heated Rivalry,” you can’t get me into hockey, but I can give you a 15-year history of the F1 race team that was Force India. And when it comes to football, the only team I’ve watched compete at Soldier Field is Olympiakos, the Piraeus soccer team. So, when the World Cup rolls around every four years, I settle in. Greece didn’t qualify and I always had my doubts about the U.S. squad, so I quickly adopted Cape Verde as my team. I wasn’t alone, which is why it was ...