Are We Still Having “Fun”?
I spent a weekend in Manhattan back in the fall of 2018 with two old college friends: Leslie, a documentary filmmaker who’s lived in Paris for many years, and Bonnie, a recently-retired high school English teacher living on a cattle ranch in the Kansas Flint Hills and...
Watching My Trees Grow
I like to think of them as my trees, two sibling white birches rising out of the bank of Thompson Lake in Poland, Maine. They arch towards the water, just a few yards beyond the screen porch from which I’ve watched them grow since their infancy. I probably shouldn’t...
A Boomer’s Defense of Millennials
As far as I’m concerned, Millennials get a bum rap. The criticisms Boomers and Gen Xers heap upon them have been well-chronicled: They don’t have the same work ethic “we” did; they expect to be pampered and given only “meaningful” work; they flit around from job to...
Books That Moved Us – Friends Write Back
In my recent post listing a number of books I’ve read and loved over the past few years, I asked readers to recommend books that have moved them. In response I’ve gotten a bunch of recommendations, which couldn’t have come at a better time. Given that we’re all locked...
Subway Diary #3: Life Underground in the Age of Corona
This certainly isn’t an entry I could have imagined writing as the third installment of my Subway Diary--an ode to my love of the New York City subways. But what a difference a few weeks can make— and not just for Joe Biden and Bernie. The heretofore...
Subway Diary # 2: The Underground Banjo Player
This is the second in a series of Subway Diary entries: snapshots of life’s noteworthy experiences underground in NYC. The events described here took place in late January as I zig-zagged my way around Manhattan on crowded subways before COVID-19 restricted my ability...
Books That Moved Me – Part ll
Back in 2016, with a lot of time on my hands while recovering from a bone marrow transplant, I posted a list of favorite books after a friend suggested that we exchange lists of books that had “moved us.” With one exception, I get all the books I read from a small...
Subway Diary #1
A lot of people these days bitch about our New York City subways--with reason. The MTA’s finger-in the-dike campaign to repair our antique system continually scrambles the system and peoples’ lives: They’re late for work; they can’t get home when they’re weary after...
New York’s Parole Process Is In Need Of Repair
You may have read the cover article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine about the quest for parole by James Morgan, a man serving a life sentence in California. If not, I would recommend it...you can read it here.The article provides an important overview of the...
Untethered in Europe – Circa 1974
This is the story of a solo journey in an untethered era…