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
The Tornado grapplers, now with a 5-1 record and better than half through their conference season, edged Hastings 20-18 Friday night.
Read MoreI worked at The Daily from ’62 to ’66, actually on the Ivory Tower, the literary magazine that came out in place of the paper on the first Monday of the month, which true Daily people generally loathed and despised. They were engaged in the manly pursuit of news and we wrote poetry and fiction, which was what girls did, they thought.
Read MoreMy annual Christmas cold arrives about three days before the joyous day itself, when I wake up feeling like a sack of sawdust and lie in bed and time passes, night and day and night, and I awaken in a swamp of cracker crumbs and soggy Kleenex and the Sunday comics, and the guests have arrived, and I put on a bathrobe and go out to greet them looking like the Ghost of Christmas Future. Nobody asks, “How are you?” They can see for themselves.
Read MoreMy wife and I are still mourning the loss of La Réserve, the elegant restaurant across from Rockefeller Center and the skating rink. The place had high ceilings and lovely murals of a lake and waterfowl, and it was never crowded, and you could sit and converse softly, as one likes to do with a loved one. The wine list was good, the food was fine, and the service was impeccable. Absolutely first-rate.
Read More“Call Europe $1.42,” said a phone-company ad we saw a couple of weeks ago. “Additional minutes are only 80c each.” Our phone was a short reach away as we read this ad, and there in the list of available countries were Austria, Denmark, France, Italy, and Sweden, where people live whom we thought instantly of calling up to say, “Hi! It’s us!” A dollar forty-two for a minute with Europe struck us as an amazing bargain. And the ad gave a number to call for international information.
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Exhausted Faculty, Anxious Graduates, Weepy Parents and Angry Taxpayers: It’s a great privilege to be your commencement speaker, but nevertheless I will be brief. First, my congratulations. I wish you a good career and a wonderful life. In fact, life is pretty good in America today, except for the fact that there is more self-pity than ever before, but that is the fault of my generation, a glum bunch to be sure. We are counting on you graduates to do better.
Read MoreSomewhere, when I was young, I got the idea that the average American couple had sex twice a week, and I’ve carried this figure in my head for more than 30 years, as a benchmark, like the .300 batting average or the idea of three square meals a day.
Read MoreThese perfect fall days make me sad, and there have been so many of them lately in Minnesota. My cure for sadness is, first, to clean off my glasses and, second, to take a fast ride on a bicycle. If that doesn’t work, I go to Murray’s. The next step is to join the Men in Their 50s Coping with Melancholy group, and I’ve never had to do that.
Read MoreIt is a wicked world, in which the power of any individual to cause suffering is so great and his power to do good is so slight, but here we are, the week of our beloved national feast, and signs of loving Providence are everywhere around us.
Read MoreIt is cold in the Midwest, winter is coming, and despite our best efforts, we are still getting older. The fabulous anti-aging vitamin cathline-b discovered in burdock and the fiddlehead fern was discovered too late for us; bales of burdock wouldn’t make us a minute younger.
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