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
Mr. Ray Nilsson died in an upstairs bedroom in my house early Monday morning around 2:35 a.m., which was nothing he or I contemplated back when I married his daughter, but life takes us down some mighty interesting roads. If he’d had his choice, he probably would’ve died in the woods around his log cabin […]
Read MoreI often walk through Times Square where the Incompetent Bomber parked his 1993 Nissan Pathfinder last Saturday with the alarm clocks wired to the M88 firecrackers in the canister between the five-gallon gasoline containers and the three propane tanks, the bags of nonexplosive fertilizer, and so I take a personal interest in the case. I’m […]
Read MoreIt’s the best spring ever, green and lush, and baby robins are chittering in their nest in the maple tree and the smell of blossoms is in the air — and yet we dour Scots cannot forget that April 27 was the anniversary of our ignominious defeat at the Battle of Dunbar, our good King […]
Read MoreI travel around a LOT — too much, but one does learn things from spending time in the company of strangers, such as the fact that too many young American men suffer from a desperate lack of social skills. I’m not talking about dancing the tango and ordering wine and engaging in witty repartee, just […]
Read MoreSaid it before, say it again: It’s a great country, and one of its beauties is freedom of expression, freer now than ever before, and another is a general amiability that you find everywhere, the helpfulness of strangers, the pleasure of small talk. Of course it’s spring and the air is brisk and this makes […]
Read MoreI think of myself as conservative and that’s why it was so irritating last Sunday in church when we were instructed to cry out gladly on cue, “He is risen indeed, Alleluia,” and so I did not. An invasion of privacy, and when the trumpets blared, trying to goose us into jubilation, I wished we […]
Read MoreIt is spring glorious spring (da do ron ron ron da do ron ron) and our gallant president has rallied his fractious forces against wacko demagoguery, the crocuses are up, and birds are returning from the South, preferring to raise their children here in Minnesota where we pull our pants on one leg at a […]
Read MoreThe mind glazes over at the sight of the words so let’s just refer to it as hrothgar reform and congratulate the president and Mrs. Pelosi for pushing it through Congress, a rational reform that the stonewall opposition depicted as a flock of hooded vampires rising from the steaming swamps of Stalinism. That strategy fell […]
Read MoreThe snow is melting in the woods of North Carolina and the kudzu is greening up. This ravenous pea-like vine was introduced to prevent soil erosion and now it is devouring the South, which goes to show you that some solutions are worse than the problem. Likewise, the judge in Yolo County, Calif., near Sacramento, […]
Read MoreWe have a good guy in the White House, a smart man of judicious temperament and profound ideals, a man with a sweet private life, a man of dignity and good humor, whose enemies, waving their hairy arms and legs, woofing, yelling absurdities, only make him look taller. Washington, being a company town, feasts on […]
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