If I had to guess and put a name on it, I'd say that at some point, the drug war was as much a function of class and social control as it was of racism.

There were a lot of video store owners and managers out of work, once pornography became more about streaming and downloads. But the other thing is that there are a lot of people who make money by finding a place to stand and add almost nothing. It's particularly ironic if your job title is pimp. On some level, in a healthier world where sex work could be rationalized and the risk reduced, your whole job title would be extraneous anyway. It's not exactly a point of great grievance if you're a pimp that suddenly your prostitutes don't require the same level of reliance.

Rural America's not coming back. That idea was lost with the Industrial Revolution. And yet with more than 80 percent of Americans living in metropolitan areas, there are still demagogues who want to run down the idea of multiculturalism, of urbanity, being the only future we have. We either live or die based on how we live in cities, and our society is either going to be great or not based on how we perform as creatures of the city.

Eating a meal with full awareness can be a powerful, enlightening, and healing experience.

Those...who insist that there are some moral limits that they will not violate, are forever surprising themselves.

The rest of America, with some small exceptions, has been bulldozed and rebuilt and then bulldozed and rebuilt again. Our places have become interchangeable. Here in New Orleans, everything from the architecture to the way in which people eat, the way in which they talk, the way in which they do business, the way in which they dance, the manner in which everything is set to a parade beat, they're all from here. There's no place like it.

Life is too short to carry the burden of a heavy heart. It does not serve you or anyone else. Free yourself through the power of forgiveness and compassion.