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
Flowering crabapples are in full purple bloom on both sides of our house. It feels as if we’re a ballroom and soon a crowd of teenagers in strapless gowns and white tuxes will come and stand around, as they do at proms, girls with girls and boys with boys, being elaborately cool and hoping somebody […]
Read MoreSaturday evening I sat on the porch of a little shotgun house on 7th Street in Columbus, Georgia, and breathed sweet and spicy air of magnolia and camellia and honeysuckle, the whole orchestra of Southern fragrance out and about, comforting the afflicted, and I thought of words I’d never ordinarily use, such as “suffused” and […]
Read MoreThe Republican candidates are slugging it out, talking tough about cracking down on gay Mexican wetback couples who are stealing our guns and leaving us defenseless against big government, decrying the evils of taxation, meanwhile an ancient Republican dropped by my house on Monday to sun himself on my porch and announce over coffee that […]
Read MoreOnce when I was teaching a composition class at the university, I flew back from New York for class and neglected to get back on Central Standard Time. I came bustling into the classroom and walked to the front, took off my coat, set my briefcase on the table, smiled at the students assembled, and […]
Read MoreWhen I was a kid looking up at a movie screen, I could read the text faster than it scrolled up from the bottom of the screen – “Once upon a time, in a land faraway, in a beautiful castle in the forest” — and I took this to mean that I was smart. It […]
Read MoreA person doesn’t learn much driving around in a car, compared to what you can pick up on foot, and that’s a sad fact about the way most of us live. Your car, comfort though it be, this little den and dining room on wheels, is a prison that deadens your senses, and to feel […]
Read MoreThe Current Occupant decided to go for a walk one fine spring morning, and he strolled down the White House drive to the main gate and chatted with the cops in the guardhouse and then strolled down Pennsylvania Avenue and through Lafayette Park to Christ Church and turned and looked at the White House through […]
Read MoreHelped a friend move into a new old house last week, just like we used to do back in college except there was no case of beer and no radio blasting. Hauled in fifty boxes one by one and felt like an ant carrying grains of sand to build up the anthill. The tedium of […]
Read MoreSomeone sent me a file of photos of Costa Rican beaches and surf and beautiful languid people in shorts and sandals — sent it to me — here — on the frozen tundra where this morning my sandy-haired gap-toothed daughter and I struggled through the sleet and snow toward school, like Washington crossing the Delaware […]
Read MoreA great work of art has the power to blow you over and to do it unexpectedly. You sit in the theater hoping for a little diversion and a line of dialogue bwwhangs you like a skillet upside the head. What hit me last Saturday afternoon was the line “Instead of happiness, heaven sends us […]
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