Suprise Me

More and more these days, I been working overtime in an attempt to channel this little guy. I have a lot to learn from him. I think my old man took this picture with a giant Speed Graphic just before we moved from the federal housing projects in Boston’s Jamaica Plain. We relocated 30 miles… Read More

If you say something embarrassing, you may be able to deny it plausibly. That's not the case if you embarrass yourself IN WRITING! Read More

Decades before there was Google, there was “the City Desk.” It wasn’t a digital resource; it was an actual person picking up a phone and dutifully looking for an answer to any reasonable question you posed. “How does the population of Indiana (where I grew up) compare to that of our neighboring states—Ohio and Illinois?”… Read More

Comedy, for me, is reified in the Animal Crackers scene when madcap Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx) steps away from staid Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont) and  Mrs. Whitehead (Margaret Irving) saying: “Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”  You know, recently I’ve favored cremation over burial, but burial’s preferable if I can have Groucho’s line carved… Read More

Add a land line phone and a black-and-white TV with a coat hanger for an antenna, and my décor was almost complete. Read More

I rarely go to the beach, and when I do, I am generally either working on my suntan (I know, very dangerous, but I still do it) or cooling off in the water. I can’t remember ever bringing a book to the beach either as a child or as an adult. But I do like… Read More

I wasn't going to write, because I thought you had it pretty well together, and you wouldn't listen to my advice anyway. Read More

I had been swallowed by the perfect madness of the wilderness. Read More

A young arrival to America faces his first spelling quiz. Read More

I have done a lot of volunteer work in the last 32 years, since retiring from paid employment. I divide that work into two categories: working on behalf of places that benefit my children and giving back to places that helped me become the person I am. I grew up in a household where my… Read More