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  In Lawyer-Land, if you shoplift but the surveillance cameras are busted and you get out of the store without the alarm going off, you’re innocent. No evidence, no crime. It doesn’t matter what is true or false, it only matters what can be proven in court. It’s the... Read More →

  Now that it’s over, I can ask, “How was your July?” I have a certain affection for the month due to the fireworks at the beginning and my birthday near the end. But this one lacked the usual oomph! A pervasive ennui hung in the air along with the miasmic humidity that... Read More →

  Years ago, I made the acquaintance of a man who wrote on occasion. Beyond the ambition of the Big Score that busted-out writers and horse players dream of, he had none. His main occupation at that time was swilling vodka, browbeating his fellow barflies, and bemoaning what... Read More →

  Seeing the photos of “trans woman” Glenique Frank after he won a marathon in London by competing in the female category gave me a moment of clarity about the current “men in women’s sports” phenomenon. They usually try to pull off what they presume is a feminine air... Read More →

  I had not been to visit my parents in more than four years when I finally made it back a few months ago. I was last down home in early 2019; we had said goodbye hoping to meet around the same time in 2020. A pandemic intervened. The world turned upside-down. Death.... Read More →

  There was a major freak-out when shortly after the fall of Roe Senator Lindsay Graham proposed a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks. I myself thought it was poor timing and impolitic. The pro-life stance had been about states’ rights, and the sudden change in focus... Read More →

  When my two sons were learning their catechism, I would joke that the most important of the Ten Commandments was the fourth: Honor thy father and thy mother. Some 20 years later, as I enter the Medicare phase of life, I recite for them (more seriously) the sage words of... Read More →

  If Pope Celestine V is familiar at all to us today, it’s because his name came up in 2013 during the resignation of Benedict XVI. As one of only a handful of popes who had previously abdicated, the erstwhile Peter of Morrone was perhaps the most hapless selection to the... Read More →

  A few weeks ago, I attended the world premier of “Tomo ni Ikiru: Shoka Kanazawa Shoko,” a documentary about the life and work of Kanazawa Shoko, the world’s greatest living calligrapher. The title means “Living Side by Side.” During opening remarks, the film’s director... Read More →

  My father was a master grade electrician and for a while he worked at the Ballantine brewing facility in Newark, N.J. Once, during a family car trip, he pointed it out as we passed by. I remember a huge expanse of buildings and cylindrical structures. He said an important... Read More →