One of my recent rummage sale finds was an autobiograhy of Jack Paar called I Kid You Not — very interesting, if you’re interested. He got his start as a comic during World War II in the Pacific. He was immensely popular with soldiers and sailors partly because he made […]

I’ve seen a lot of scholars speculate about Ben Franklin’s religious beliefs. He didn’t say a lot about them, for a very good reason: he was never asked! But at the age of 85 he responded to a letter from the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles. Stiles asked him […]

He helped Adam Smith write The Wealth of Nations. He discovered the Gulf Stream. He started the first public libraries, fire departments and canals in America. He invented bifocals and a heating system that more than quadrupled the energy efficiency of thousands of American homes. He was a coauthor of […]

I’ve been reading Livy, as I mentioned before, and he seems to think that Romulus, the eponymous founder and first king of Rome, was murdered. And since Livy had access to sources no one else will ever see, there’s a very good chance he’s correct. And even if he’s not, […]

This is a screen shot from when my buddy Brown Bear was on national television, when Sarah got voted off the island on America’s Next Top Model. If you remember she lost weight so she wasn’t a plus-size anymore, but not enough weight to be a minus-size. As she closed […]

I have hosted writer’s groups for more than 20 years and spoken with many, many people who wanted to be writers and I believe each and every one of us has the potential to be a great writer. I’ve seen it happen again and again and it never fails to […]

Thanks to my rummaging at tag sales and flea markets, I come across a lot of movies that are probably not coming to a theater near you, and they probably won’t be on the late-night movie channel either — for lots of good reasons. So my daughter and I have […]

Finally I’m reading Livy. To understand Rome, they say, you have to read Livy. And Livy is a truly great read. His history of Rome, which he drew from sources no one else will ever see, can only be described as rollicking. You just can’t summarize it. It’s like the […]

I’m sorry to say I have to retract my endorsement of Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael medieval murder mystery series. This is not to say I have not found many of them to be great reads, but I just ran into one that is dumb, dumb, dumb. And I don’t mean […]

Abraham Lincoln liked to attend the theater with his secretary, John Hay, and saw several plays in which John Wilkes Booth acted. (I learned this from Lincoln at Gettysburg by Gary Wills.) He especially liked Shakespeare and admired the Shakespearean actor James Hackett. Lincon and Hay disagreed about the way […]