In brief

Jan 12, 2022–While coming up with a topic for this week’s column, I became discouraged. Here’s why: No one bothers to read anymore. We are all tik-tokked and insta-ed to within an inch of our attention span. A few weeks ago I wrote what I thought was a brilliant...

No makeup

Dec 22, 2021–A group of us fuddie-duddies (people born in one of the previous centuries) were discussing the appeal and purpose of tattoos and piercings. Why, we asked rhetorically, do humanoids feel the need to ink their limbs and force metal objects through septa,...

The Velvet Fog

Dec 1, 2021–I’ve mentioned before my obsession with 1940s radio entertainment. Every night I fall to sleep listening to Edgar Bergen, Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, and The Big Show (Tallulah Bankhead was waaaaaay ahead of her time). Every program featured a musical...

Free range parenting

Oct 6, 2021–A generation ago, we kept chickens in cages and let kids “free range.” Today they’ve swapped places. Kids today are over managed. A lot of it revolves around school. Starting in Kindergarten, you got on the bus while it was still dark. You rode the bus for...

Food for thought

  Sept 29, 2021–In the panoply of sentient life on earth, it wasn’t that long ago that we didn’t have candy bars. Or ice cream. Or sodas or pop-tarts. Breakfast cereals. Hamburgers. French fries. Coffee didn’t come to Europe until the 1500s. That means even...