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
A 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 […]
Read MoreFebruary is the season of small sorrows when everyone feels middle-aged even if you are sixteen, but there are cures for this. One is skating and another is the convivial lunch. You meet three friends at the Chat ‘N Chew and order soup and a sandwich and you yak and yak and nobody tries to […]
Read MoreRudolph Giuliani is running for president, it would seem, and watching his interviews reminds you that it is quite a leap from City Hall to the White House, and that the lecture circuit is not the best preparation for higher office. Out there, Mr. Giuliani is saying the same applause lines night after night, but […]
Read MoreAs a clean and articulate man, I was surprised to see the Biden for President movement run over a bicycle while backing out of the driveway and then take out the gladiolas, but there it was and the distinguished gentleman from Delaware had to go on Comedy Central to explain himself and then clarify his […]
Read MoreNew Year’s Eve is a high point of the old year and the low point of the new. You go off to a party with expectations of hilarity and camaraderie and wind up in a cacophonous room packed with people shouting at people two feet away. You eat shrimp and drink various grain- or grape-based […]
Read MoreThe world is full of surprises. Some things are new under the sun. A movie in the Mayan language was No. 1 at the box office, and Placido Domingo got booed at the Met, and Rudolph Giuliani is the leading candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, and a congressman with a freezer full of […]
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