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
My 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.
Read MoreI write every day except when I’m sick or my wife insists that we are on vacation. I like to write early in the morning, and if I wake up at 5am or even 4am, it is with a sense of gratitude for the extra hours of pure quiet. I make a pot of coffee, boot up my laptop, sit anywhere in the house that seems promising and launch forth.
Read MoreI saw the famous Eisenstadt picture of the V-J Day kiss in Life when I was a boy and thought it was sweet: the girl in the white dress standing, bent back in the arms of the sailor who is planting a hard kiss on her lips, with Times Square and grinning onlookers in the background.
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