Cathi Harris

Author: Cathi Harris

  • How American Healthcare Got Here, Part I

    Why the United States is the only developed nation without universal healthcare “So, if you can’t afford to pay for your medicine, you just die?” That was the question posed by a fellow Redditor in a forum discussing the U.S. health system. The person who posted was from a European country with socialized medicine and…

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    Cathi Harris
    A group of people in surgical gowns and masks stand in a circle looking down into the camera. In the middle, above them, is a surgical lamp.

  • Watching: The 2026 Winter Olympics

    I have always loved watching the Olympics – world-class athletes from all over the world coming together to compete against each other, but also somehow celebrate their shared humanity, at the same time.

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    Cathi Harris
    image of the Olympic rings in a darkened skating rink above the ice.

  • The Soon Forgotten – A coda

    Since moving to Berlin, I am often struck by the streets, buildings and parks named to honor people who were killed by the Nazis, and wishing that the vastly more numerous loyal National Socialists could see and know that they themselves would not be among the triumphant victors of a great thousand-year reich, but instead…

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    Cathi Harris
    An outdoor sign marks a museum exhibt: The text reads: "Berlin 1933-1945. Zwischen Propaganda und Terror. Between Propaganda and Terror.

  • Now for the Antidote

    If you believe that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, then the lessons we should have learned over the vast expanse of human history – from cataclysms both natural and man-made – is that human nature favors cooperation.

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    Cathi Harris
    Stone walls line a narrow underground passageway

  • Not Working for the Man

    We support organized labor. My husband is a member of the Ver.di union. And one of the main reasons we decided to move our family to Germany and the European Union was so our kids would start their working lives with more rights and protections than we had in the United States. So, while it…

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    Cathi Harris

  • Freedom, Texas style

    A blogger that I follow writes about her life as an immigrant and rural homesteader in a small South American country. I love to read her updates about her life on her small farm, with chickens, goats, a huge garden. I live through her vicariously from my apartment in central Berlin, where I must content…

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    Cathi Harris
    Two men in a motorboat proceed down a swollen river surveying flood damage and searching for victims.

  • Fiddling While the World Burns

    Why I still nag mz son to do his homework even when it feels like the world is ending.

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    Cathi Harris
    Photo of an ancient coliseum column seen at night and lit from within with an amber glow.

  • This is What Mass Deportation Looks Like

    Around the corner from my apartment in Berlin, there is a group of five brass plates inlaid in the cobblestones of the sidewalk in front of the house at Boxhagener Strasse 50. They are the Stolpersteine for the Kaufmann family: Ewald and his wife Helene (her birth name was Gerechtner); their sons, Theo, Kurt, and Julian; daughter-in-law Johanna…

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    Cathi Harris
    Black and white image of people and belongings being loaded onto a passenger train.