Columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
I had meant to take up the Middle East today, but my analytical powers have wilted in the heat, and it is all I can do to get the recycling out to the curb and take the car in for an oil change. And now I’m all caught up in the question of what color […]
Read MoreGLACIER BAY, Alaska – I am aboard a cruise ship gliding slowly between snow-capped mountains that remind me of the art my parents hung on our living room wall back in Minnesota in the Fifties. It was a large translucent picture of snow-capped mountains, lit by an electric bulb behind it, and when guests came […]
Read MoreA summer night in paradise, supper in the back yard, and the neighbors’ elderly cat who is on his last legs wanders over, smelling the salmon on our grill, walking as if his feet hurt. He’s got the old cat blues. He wakes up in the morning and everything tastes like turpentine, he feels like […]
Read MoreIf a preacher secretly accepts a bucket of money from a saloonkeeper to organize a temperance rally at a rival saloon and maybe send in a gang of church ladies to chop up the bar with their little hatchets, this would strike you and me as sleazy, but others are willing to make allowances, and […]
Read MoreMy sandy-haired, gap-toothed daughter has written “I love Daddy” in green chalk on the driveway, and of course it’s gratifying to get this endorsement, but a father is never sure if he’s doing the right thing or not. I am an indulgent parent who wants to make her happy, but instead of taking her to […]
Read MoreWhite custardy clouds in the blueberry sky and here I am, sprawled on a chaise on the porch, ambition leaking out of me like water through cupped hands. Ambition has left the building. Hello, summer. The country is in danger but someone else can rally to defend it, not me. Flag-burning gay married men are […]
Read MoreTimes have changed, and I know this because I have children, two of them, one born in the old days and one in modern times. One was born back before seat belts, when a child might ride standing up in the front seat next to Daddy as he drove 75 mph across North Dakota, and […]
Read MorePeople who live in mud huts should not throw mud, especially if it comes from their own roofs. As Scripture says, don’t point to the speck in your neighbor’s eye when you have a piece of kindling in your own. I see by the papers that the Republicans want to make an issue of Nancy […]
Read MoreMemorial Day is a fading holiday, destined to go the way of the Glorious Fourth and Labor Day, which once had ceremonial functions and now are simply bonus Saturdays. It was a small-town institution and a matter of community pride to honor our dead. The citizenry hiked up to the cemetery on Monday morning behind […]
Read MoreMy mother told me the other day that there’s a lot she’d like to know but there’s nobody left to ask. Mother is 91 and her mind is sharp and she feels her losses. Of her 12 siblings, only one remains. All of the others whose reminiscences she used to enjoy have gone on to […]
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