A morning walk along Columbus Avenue
Now I’m an old man, in no rush, keeping an eye out for curbs and crevices and treacherous slabs of sidewalk, hoping not to make a spectacle of myself, knowing that in New York I am surrounded by write...
13 Jul 20247min
A lucky man admits to happiness, and why not?
Ask a Midwesterner, “How are you?” and we tend to say, “Not bad” or “It could be worse,” feeling it’d sound glib or boastful to say, “Delighted,” and we men in particular tend to adopt an easygoing gr...
6 Jul 20247min
Spring is here, time to get to know each other
Myself, I have a bias in favor of public education because that was my experience. I came from very exclusive fundamentalist evangelicals who looked down on Methodists and Lutherans as Scripturally of...
29 Jun 20247min
The beauty of falls that you walk away from
I fell twice crossing 89th Street, once in the middle of the street, once at the curb. I misjudged the step, crashed down on my hands and knees and chin, and once I walked into a tree branch on the pa...
22 Jun 20247min
On the road again, meeting folks again
It’s an age of dread, the news perpetually discouraging, TV and media merchandising ugliness, and either you join the Greek chorus of gloom or you go with the American choir of cheerful resolve, and I...
15 Jun 20246min
The critic who lit up my week and more
I’m still writing books but haven’t been reviewed by anybody in ages, maybe because I’m an Old White Male and our time is up, or maybe I’ve written too many books, and I’m okay with unreviewing — goin...
8 Jun 20248min
Let's talk about honesty, grrrr, rrrfff, rrrfff
The fact is that when I was a kid in Minnesota, struggling my way through six-foot snowdrifts to school, long before lightweight down coats were invented — I was an 82-pound fourth-grader wearing 42 p...
1 Jun 20247min
THEY WERE SO YOUNG
Monday is Memorial Day, a day that got lost when it was turned into a weekend, and someday we’ll turn it back into a day, which it was for a hundred years. Decoration Day. After the bloody Civil War, ...
27 Mai 20247min
