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
Here we are, ignorant peasants in our mud huts at the base of the volcano of finance, begging the gods to spare us as the ground shakes beneath our feet and economists examine the entrails of pigeons and the shamans of the Federal Reserve fling handfuls of sacred powder into the steaming crater. We live […]
Read MoreThere was a small epiphany in church last week when we sang the recessional “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” a German chorale in which we basses must jump around more limberly than we may be used to. A tough part compared to “When the Roll Is Called up Yonder” and I stood in the rear […]
Read MoreIt is unbearably bleak as winter lingers in March and a cold wind blows and the people on the obituary page seem better looking than yourself and your prostate feels like a hockey puck and you walk around with your wallet and car keys looking for your wallet and car keys and you read an […]
Read MoreSenator McCain is 71 and most likely he will be the last Old Guy presidential candidate for all of you boomers. Goodbye, Great White Father in Washington. It happens as you age: Other people get younger. The pilots flying you to New York are teenagers. Your banker, your therapist, even your urologist is young. Still, […]
Read MoreDriving down Highway 52 last Monday morning at high speed so as not to be late for an MRI of my cranium, I passed a semi as it was barreling through a snowdrift and suddenly I was in a cloud of whiteness, much like the Rapture will be, but with zero visibility. I was talking […]
Read MoreI have rather low self-esteem, which is a handicap for a man in this line of work whom you, dear reader, expect to give you 750 words in the strike zone about the economic stimulus package and all those little government checks going out to 130 million of you in hopes you’ll go buy candles […]
Read MoreOnly February and already it’s a fine political year here in our great roisterous republic with a carnival cast of colorful drones and smiley eminences huffing and puffing across the field of battle and tumbling off the cliff, leaving two serious contenders in each party. Thanks to all the candidates for their nerve. Hurray for […]
Read MoreBack in the day, we fundamentalists didn’t mess with angels, sensing that Catholics owned the angel franchise, part of their dim smoky world of bead-rattling and hocus-pocus and lugubrious statuary, so instead we focused on the Holy Spirit who dwelt in all of us true believers and told us what to do and what to […]
Read MoreLet’s take a break from the presidential primaries and talk for a moment about the bad cold that got its talons into me last week and is hanging on despite an onslaught of pharmaceuticals. My gosh, I have thrown fistfuls of acetaminophen, pheniramine maleate, pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, dextromethorphan, prednisone, azithromycin, doxycycline, at the situation, plus herbal […]
Read MoreAnother fine political year is upon us with seesaw races and fresh-baked dramas daily, high dudgeon, flights of fancy, tireless flesh-pressing, and thanks to the Web, you can feast on it anytime night or day, no need to sit by a TV and wait for the show to start. If reality has any bearing on […]
Read More