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
Spent a weekend in Abilene, Texas, a town that voted 75 percent for the Current Occupant in 2004, and nothing bad happened to me at all, they were as friendly as could be. Any time I sat down, they put food in front of me, and all in all they were witty and well-spoken and […]
Read MoreThe Scripture reading in church Sunday gave me a jolt — Exodus 32, which refers to the Chosen People wearing earrings, men as well as women, and I twitched when the lector read it. Yikes! Moses got his ears pierced? What else didn’t we know??? And then a bigger jolt. God is so furious at […]
Read MoreWe are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on […]
Read MoreI was in Santa Monica for a day last week, sampling baked figs at the farmers’ market on the Third Street promenade, a sweet sunny day that makes an old Midwesterner like me a little nervous. We fear seduction. Some days in California are so tender and delicious that a person could abandon all commitments […]
Read MoreIt’s just human nature that some calamities register in the brain and others don’t. The train engineer texting at the throttle (“HOW R U? C U L8R”) and missing the red light and twenty-five people die in the crash — oh God, that is way too real — everyone has had a moment of supreme […]
Read MoreI saw two moose on a bike trail in Anchorage last week and did not kill either one of them, neither the cow nor her calf, though under the Bush Doctrine I certainly had a right to, since the cow could have charged and pinned me to a tree and danced me to death. Should […]
Read MoreSo the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, “Throw the bums out!” They’ve been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they […]
Read MoreThe Republicans are meeting down the hill from my house, helicopters are pounding the air, and there are more suits on the streets and big black SUVs and a brownish cloud venting from the hockey arena where the convention is assembled. A large moment for little old St. Paul, which is more accustomed to visitations […]
Read MoreCalifornia is another country. You wake up in the morning and New York is already on its first coffee, and the first scandal has broken in Washington, one more Republican crony caught with his hand in the honey pot. It all feels very far away. You wake up, your laptop is full of e-mails but […]
Read MoreI got to go to the Iowa State Fair on Sunday and eat a very excellent pork chop on a stick as I stood by the U.S. Marines booth, where various civilians lined up to do chin-ups on a high bar, counted off by a Marine whose T-shirt said “Pain Is Weakness Leaving The Body.” […]
Read More