Writing presents challenges, but I’m pretty sure they’re not the ones you think they are. No, I don’t have a problem finding time to write, really. I rarely find myself with writer’s block, the inability to commit words, sentences, and paragraphs to a Word file. And I don’t want for things to write about.

So what is my challenge? Candidly, I find it tough, too often, to contain my rage! I’m sitting here, along with all of you and the rest of our fellow Americans, watching a society decline. Sure as I’m pounding these keys, “there’s a bad moon on the rise.” Are things as bad as John C. Fogerty suggested? No and yes. No, hurricanes and overflowing rivers won’t

Overhead in the nonprofit sector has been a hot topic for several years. For a long time the consensus said overhead was a pretty good measure of organizational effectiveness. Spending lots = bad; next to nothing = good! Entities focused on overhead to avoid bad ratings from Charity Navigator and other evaluators. Never mind what the group was doing, or that for one group overhead might, in fact, be programmatic expenditures:  just have a low overhead ratio to keep the contributions coming!

Overhead as a measure has similar attributes to those we attach too often to government programs, albeit probably in reverse. More Medicare spending = good; cuts = bad. Maybe, though, money as a proxy makes not so

I’m a fan! I think Senator Edward Kennedy was an extraordinary public servant whose accomplishments have made life better for all of us. Perfect? Absolutely not. Extraordinarily flawed? Absolutely. No one knows what really happened 45 years ago off Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, but it was surely nothing good, and a young woman died. Bad!!! And there’s more. Drinking, cheating, etc. Nothing to be proud of, and for way too many years!

Alas, somehow this man found time and energy to accomplish so much. Without Ted Kennedy there is no Affordable Care Act, for his leadership in the late 1960s and 1970s brought forth the Clinton effort and, now, the Affordable Care Act. (For naysayers, read The Medical Miracle by Paul

It’s a book kind of day. First up is encouraging news about the millennials. Adrienne LaFrance for The Atlantic reports on Pew poll in Millenials Are Out-Reading Older Generations. Interesting info; libraries beware!

From BuzzFeed I saw How Many of the Greatest Books by Women Have You Read? by staffer Arianna Rebolini. I skipped it, but I also skipped 100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library at artofmanliness.com. Both lists seemed too parochial!

Now, being who I am, Have You Read the 200 ‘Best American Novels’? by Victoria Fleischer for the PBS Newshour caught my eye. The easy answer is no. Next come “not enough” and, finally, there’s 23!

So then I saw an FB post from a friend—actually,

I was planning a day off, until I realized it is September 11. That 13 years have passed boggles, truly!

Now, in the prior version of Mark Rubin Writes, I wrote NOTICE: IF YOU’RE A CONVENTIONAL THINKER, DON’T READ THIS POST! I REALLY MEAN IT!. Originally, it was in A Life at 50-ISH.

I argued, back in 2010, that we gave too much credence to what happened on 9/11/2001. Don’t misunderstand me, please. What happened was horrible beyond words, and I cannot imagine facing the task of responding “appropriately.” But, we were then and are now and have been for a very long time the most powerful nation on this planet, and al Qaeda lived in caves at