So said Yankee GM Brian Cashman, a careful man so practiced in studied speech that this must rank as a wild exclamation. The Yankees, Major League Baseball, and the team’s one-time superstar multimillionaire third baseman Alex Rodriquez have found themselves embroiled in a controversy so complex that it is difficult to find someone to root …
The poet John Hollander has died at 83. He wrote one of my favorite poems, Hobbes, 1651: When I returned at last from Paris hoofbeats pounded Over the harsh and relenting road; It was cold, the snow high; I was old, and the winter Sharp, and the dead mid-century sped by In ominous, blurred streaks …
When I worked at Playboy a few years ago, some of the fellows were fond of a saying: “Don’t mess with another man’s blow job.” Crude, blunt, and yet eloquent, the saying had a lot of applications. Don’t criticize another man’s girlfriend (boyfriend.) Don’t come on to another man’s girlfriend (boyfriend.) Don’t interfere with his …
Beautiful Harper’s Ferry, sitting at he confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers at the bottom of the steep trio of Loudon, Bolivar and Maryland Heights, once had one of only two federal arsenals in the United States, which is why John Brown decided to begin his slave uprising there. Less than two years later, …
APPALACHIAN SUMMER: HARPER’S FERRY, WVA, AUGUST 4th Read More »
Cara took us to a very stylish Mexican restaurant called Coba, which had a jellyfish tank, and where I proved incapable of ordering a fish taco.
Given the size of the armies engaged, the Battle of Perryville, fought on October 8, 1862, was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Generally thought of as a confederate tactical victory but a Federal strategic victory–what that means is that after a ferocious, day-long the rebels forced the Yanks to withdraw from …
We really enjoyed visiting the Muhammad Ali Center in downtown Louisville. I was impressed how the center handled all aspects of Ali’s career–boxer, activist, humanitarian–in a straightforward, warts-and-all manner. You hear him calling white people `devils’; you also hear him say that a 60 year old man who thinks the same things that he did …
Well, it was a cave, and it was mammoth. We took the short tour, and we were sated. Lots like this. The Park Ranger who guided the tour was very good. Later we visited Lincoln’s birthplace at Sinking Springs, most memorable for a majestic temple which contains a replica of the humble log cabin where …
West Virginia, astonishingly vertical, rises like a wall nearly everywhere but right in front of you. The highways cut like ribbons through the hills, while below grade, little communities huddle in the hollers. We got off the highway and followed a thin road to Matewan (that’s MATE-wan), a coal and railroad town. Now kind of …
View from our hotel balcony.