I had a great time on Monday when I spent the day with my cousin Theresa Beckemeyer. Theresa is an artist who lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband Bob; their three sons are up and out, working in New York, San Francisco and Denver. Apart from a short visit after my Dad’s funeral, I …
Today is the 150th anniversary of the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack, the world’s first battle between ironclad ships. “You can see surprise in a ship just as you can see it in a man, and there was surprise all over the Merrimack,’’ one sailor said when the smaller Monitor emerged from behind …
Joe Scarborough said something particularly dumb on this morning’s program. Talking about the possibility of a brokered GOP convention that would catapult a fresh face to the Republican nomination, he brought up the effect Sarah Palin had on the McCain candidacy in 2008. Joe noted, correctly, that after her selection, the ticket took the lead …
Michael Gerson—David Brooks without the tough, biting, punky edge–tells us in The Washington Post that we should not write off Mitt Romney. Sure, things look bad for the Republican brand right now, he says, but we should resist the temptation to speculate this situation into infinity. Just eight months ago, he reminds us, “President Obama …
The brilliant Harlan Ellison on the sad state of the American writer.
I was born Catholic. My father was one of ten sons in a Polish Catholic family, and my mother was one of eleven children in a Polish Catholic family, and I had a great many Catholic aunts and uncles and cousins. I went to a Catholic grade school, a Catholic high school, and a Catholic …
It wasn’t exactly a bucket list item, but after decades of enthusiastic fandom, Ginny and I finally got to see the great Aretha Franklin in concert at Radio City Music Hall. We had mixed views: Aretha was in good voice and good mood; although we expected her to be at least subdued after the shock …
Thanks once again to Jackie Eberstein, Charlie Schultze and my other friends at the Civil war Forum of Metropolitan New York for inviting me to speak at their monthly dinner last Wednesday. With the sesquicentennial of the duel between the Monitor and the Merrimac coming up on March 9th, and with Lieutenant John Worden, the …
Ahmad Bradshaw hatches the winning touchdown in the Giants 21-17 victory over the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. The Patriots had decided to allow him to score in order to conserve time for the offense to mount a comeback. As Bradshaw was running in, Eli Manning was yelling “Don’t score! Don’t score!”, hoping to run …
This is the undefeated cap which my daughter Cara gave me for Christmas. With the magic conjured by the combination of this cap and my head, the Giants beat the Jets and the Cowboys to close out the regular season, and then beat the Falcons, Packers, 49ers and the Patriots to win Super Bowl XLVI. …