Peter Pavia

  The embers of an exhausted year—one more Christmas behind us—carry with them a familiar melancholy. The time is bittersweet, if not depressing, and I learned long ago to embrace this seasonal interlude with this thought in mind: The end of anything is hard. Once we lapse... Read More →

  In his 1969 hit “Polk Salad Annie,” singer songwriter Tony Joe White, who also penned the immortal (and more traditional) “Rainy Night in Georgia,” tossed off these kooky lines: “The only thing her brothers were fit for / was stealing watermelons out of my truck patch.” A... Read More →

  Some years ago, twenty-three to be exact—I’m sure because it was the occasion of my wedding day—I received this note: “Hope everything breaks your way.” It was from one of the most generous people I’ve ever known, a man who committed much of his life to splashing money... Read More →

  George Barone came into this world in the dying gasp of the 19th century, sired by the same father, James, as my maternal grandmother Rose. They had different mothers, technically making them half-siblings among the ten or so other children both camps totaled when all was... Read More →

  Who here remembers “two weeks to flatten the curve”? Anybody? How about six feet of social distance to “stop the spread”? And let’s not forget this hoary chestnut: “Follow the science.” All of these were still in vogue—though the bodies stacked outside Elmhurst hospital,... Read More →

  Merely a few feet from my bed stood Jack the Youngster, burbling in his Pack ’n Play portable rumpus cage/crib. His emission of growling noises—a favored locution of his and of mine, and an ongoing source of amusement for both of us—was wearing thin now that it was time to... Read More →

In an essay that appeared in this journal about a year ago titled “My Pilgrim’s Progress,” I explored how moral failure and cultural erosion have produced a nether state where the most affluent among us, the most privileged, are nevertheless a lost and unhappy lot. I also... Read More →

“Gambling,” said Meyer Lansky—and the old racketeer knew a thing or two about the subject—“pulls at the core of a man.” If the explosion of legal online sports betting in New York State is any indicator, millions of men are being pulled at their core; millions of women, too. The... Read More →

In one of the many rules St. Benedict wrote for his 6th-century religious community, the father of Western monasticism directed his monks to “remember to keep death before your eyes daily.” A dour suggestion at first blush, Benedict was urging his followers to contemplate the... Read More →

Sometimes it seems as if the institutions of our seasick culture have embraced the same way of thinking, that is, that every problem is a public-relations problem crying out for a public-relations solution. This obsession with creating appearances instead of addressing realities... Read More →