commentary & opinion

James Ketterer gives a commentary on 'The Seductive Nature of Normalcy' James Ketterer is director of extension programs and professor of practice at the American University of Armenia. He is a frequent panelist on The Roundtable.

This weekend at PS21, French artists François Chaignaud and Aymeric Hainaux present Mirlitons, a 70-minute movement and sound duet. Chaignaud is a dancer, choreographer, and singer; Hainaux is a musician, singer, and beatboxer.

Well, here we are again. Another headline in the news. Another sexual assault case under investigation. Lives forever changed. Another round of people choosing sides and verbally throwing stones, and we weren’t even there, nor do we have all the facts…and due to privacy laws, we may never have them.

This past weekend, New Yorkers began to go to the polls to vote in the 2026 election. On the ballot, there are elections for Congress, statewide offices, the state legislature, and many local offices. That last one is new — a new law moved many races for local office to even-numbered years in an effort to boost voter participation.

"This is Halloween! This is Halloween!" Do you recognize that? It's from one of my favorite movies to watch this time of year: the 1993 stop-motion animated classic Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas." It was released by Touchstone Pictures, a division of Disney, so I consider Jack Skellington and Sally one of the best couples ever in a Disney animated movie.

There’s a lot of ways for football coaches to get fired. Maybe the easiest one is to lose a lot of games. You can also lose the support of your players or get into a fight with your school administration or team owners. The one thing that typically doesn’t get you fired is winning. And winning by a lot.

There is a conviction in Christian tradition that it is often the most dejected or looked-down-upon members of society, rather than the wealthiest and most powerful, who in fact know best about how to make their communities a better place.

Quietly, last month, the New York State Democratic Committee transferred $10 million to Governor Hochul’s re-election campaign war chest. You heard that right: $10 million. And the move was entirely legal.

There are certain crowd environments where you take something of a calculated risk, like sitting in the lower deck at a baseball game or close to the track at NASCAR. In those cases, being close to the game could potentially put you in harm’s way. You wouldn’t expect that to be the case at tennis — the sport of kings, where contact on the court is forbidden, where you have to apologize to your opponent if the ball accidentally hits the top of the net and goes over.

Some years ago, I took my then 83-year-old mother to the ER for a severe allergic reaction that caused her lips and tongue to swell so enormously I thought her airways would become blocked. It was July, when the new interns and residents start.