Besides our darling daughter Sarah, my ex and I created a writing group in Henniker, New Hampshire, that’s still meeting 25 years later, every Wednesday at the library. I’ve had several writing groups like this, all free of course, and they have all added in great measure to my own […]
My friend S moved to Istanbul a couple of months ago with her daughter SS, also a great friend of mine. They’ve been jetting off to Turkey, or to England, as long as I have known them, but they always came back after four or five months. This time S […]
Getting excited about my upcoming train trip from Toronto to Quebec City. I even went out and bought a laptop so I can blog and tweet and Facebook to beat the band. Webmaster Joseph Obeng has helped me get it set up, and I’m practicing on it so I won’t […]
Chauncey Depew advises us, “On issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost,” and, I have noticed with gratitude that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg agrees with me that anyone who wants to build or renovate a house of worship anywhere in the United […]
Armand Augustin Louis, Marquis de Caulaincourt, wrote an account of Naploeon’s Russian campaign called With Napoleon in Russia that did not appear until the twentieth century, because a lot of people had to die first, but when it appeared, it was clear that this was one of the most important […]
No one in Massachusetts considers the Massachusetts Legislature to be a representative form of government. It never has been. Some years ago we had a referendum on the Blue Laws, laws which prevented people from doing business on Sunday. This had nothing to do with selling liquor. That’s another issue […]
Ever since my entry about Pushkin, who showed us all how it is done, I’ve been thinking about books that not only provided enjoyable reading, but also changed and enlarged my ideas about what a book can be and do. The first book that comes to mind is A Passage […]
What fun I’ve been having grunting and sweating and summiting every day. The summits are by no means impressive — 30- or 40-minute climbs — but I’ve gotten past the idea of resting every third day or even every fourth. Now I take a day off once a week. The […]
In the mail today I received a letter from the president of Harvard University. “Would it be agreeable to you,” he asks, “to give a short course of lectures here upon certain banking questions which we want to have treated by an expert?” I’m saying, and I’m sure you are […]
Ever since William Faulkner took a year off from his job at the post office to read the Russians, Russian literature has acquired the unwarranted reputation of something American writers have to slog through before they can really write. That’s not too far off the mark. American writers ought to […]