Dear Max– I hope this letter finds you well, but given the state of the postal service these days my hope is simply that it finds you at all. Maybe this is why nobody writes letters anymore. So–if this has indeed found you–know that I’m also sending my love to Anne and the Mongol Horde. […]

I’m writing on the eve of the Iowa caucus, the results of which will be old news by the time you read this. But, precisely because I want to write about the Iowa results, some waiting is entailed–and it gives me the perfect opportunity to make a few predictions. OK–this is not, as my wife […]

“You’re a lousy American,” I told our daughter. “What kind of citizen are you, anyway?” She had been assigned, as homework, a questionnaire which required her to view the State of the Union Address. Not much fun, she thought. So I told her everyone, every year, loved the speech and looked forward to it almost […]

Writing this first column of 2016, I’d like to begin by wishing everyone a happy New Year. But I can’t. I can’t wish a happy 2016 for ISIS–or for extremists of any stripe, anywhere–and I certainly can’t wish a happy year to those who for their own reasonsactively harm others. I can only wish they […]

Some milestones in life seem daunting until you realize, usually during them, that the anticipation of the moment was worse than the moment itself. Childbirth springs to mind, as do pre-wedding jitters. One’s first driving test. A first day on the job or on campus. What we do, customarily, is get through it–whatever “it” is. […]

By “our” I mean the world’s, in its now–after ISIS’ Paris attacks–international fight against “Islamic” terrorism. Note that I put Islamic in quotation marks. It seems to me there’s nothing remotely Islamic–a word whose root, Islam, means, if I remember correctly, Peace–in terrorism. The United States, of course, has endured more than its fair share […]

And now, apparently, we’ll be putting troops on the ground in Syria to combat ISIS. I’m fine with this. As I told my wife a year or so ago, they just don’t know they’re dead yet. But–and as would befit a war-weary United States–we don’t need to pour in the entire apparatus at our disposal. […]

It’s October again, and time for something that has become a tradition in our family–my weeklong bachelorhood. I can’t say I enjoy it–because I love my wife–but knowing she and our daughters are off having fun alleviates any devastation here on the home front. They send me pictures. It’s quiet. And I get to watch […]

The water went out in our house a couple of weeks back, and my first thought was, “Welcome to East Porterville.” This was particularly galling because just the night before I could hear, through an open living room window, the reassuring susurration of the citrus irrigation. It’s a sound that says, “All is well with […]

Some, in the pursuit of physical fitness, turn to running. Some would call that jogging. I, more accurately, stagger–although I do refer to it as a run. I try to run six days per week, and thus far it has helped keep me in decent shape. Decent, that is to say, if pear-shaped is acceptable. […]