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
A person can learn a great deal if you’re lucky enough to get into serious trouble and of course it’s more beneficial if you do it when you’re young. But trouble is a good teacher at any time and it’s a shame so many people try to skip the School of Hard Knocks. If only […]
Read MorePeople stood out on my front porch the other night talking about politics and inhaling the sweetness of fall, intimations of nobility in the air and also decaying vegetable matter. What we felt was the elation of a warm night in late October in the northern latitudes, when you can stand outdoors in your shirtsleeves […]
Read MoreIf your alderman introduced a resolution in the city council called the Salute To Our Boys In Uniform Resolution, which proclaimed that we support the troops in their mission to light a beacon of freedom in a dark world, etc., and in small print in Section II, Division A, Paragraph 4, Line 122 was a […]
Read MoreMy Dear Mr. DeLay: I have been waiting two weeks for one Republican to leap to your defense and express outrage at a grand jury so callous as to indict a virtuous man, and nobody has. They’ve all been coy and cautious and whispering to the press that you are not their favorite guy in […]
Read MoreAnd now it is fall. The Northern Hemisphere tilts away from the sun and the oaks turn maroon, the maples yellow. The air is like Armagnac brandy. There is firewood for sale, and pumpkins, and pontoon boats with For Sale signs taped to the sides parked at the ends of driveways, waiting for somebody in […]
Read MorePeople tell me I work too hard, but I don’t work nearly so hard as my mother did, raising six children, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes and hanging them out on the line, and then there was the late-summer orgy of canning. We scoured the garden for every last tomato, string bean, ear of corn, cucumber. […]
Read MoreThese are hard times, but then life is hard, as it says in Ecclesiastes: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong nor riches to men of understanding; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” And now scientists have found that football fans experience a 20 percent drop in […]
Read MoreOne of the benefits of Katrina is how it got Congress to focus on real things – the relief of suffering and devastation and eventually an investigation to learn why Homeland Security stumbled so badly — and to cancel the nonsense for the time being, such as the push to roll back the estate tax, […]
Read MoreBlanche DuBois said she always had depended on the kindness of strangers but that was before last week. Last week showed you pretty clearly that you should never ever get in a situation where you’re trapped and don’t have food or water. Nobody’s going to come. Lower taxes and less government means you better live […]
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Now that medical science has established that coffee is an important source of antioxidants that help prevent cancer, heart disease, diabetes and stroke, you and I can get on with our lives. A cup of coffee is what starts our engines and saves us from torpor and lassitude. We always knew this. Starbucks was built […]
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