Category: Columns

  • Hope in a Bottle

    I have always warmed to authors who thank their spouses for preparing their index. Such marital harmony, such mutual society, help and comfort. You can imagine their kitchen: she sitting at the table rummaging through proofs and index cards, he standing at the stove turning Seville oranges into coarse-cut marmalade. It is surely gracious also…

  • Seller’s Remorse

    Wisconsin Estate Sale, Antiques, Collectables, Linens, Furniture. Quality Household Miscellaneous. Pole Barn Full of Tools. Everything Must Go! Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to write one of those ads. But let me tell you, it’s pretty hard to make the words “household miscellaneous” jump…

  • Gay Marriage? Get Used to the Idea

    Until the late sixties, in much of the country, the pigmentation differences between my wife and I would have made us felons had we tried to get married. According to one Virginia judge in 1959, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents.…The fact that…

  • Wine, wine, wine! Wild Horses on Bended Knee

    The saints of February are a rum lot. The larger their reputation, the less can be said for certain about their lives and activities—and vice versa. The blameless virgin Saint Scholastica, twin sister of Saint Benedict, is relatively well documented—for someone who lived fifteen hundred years ago. But she is remembered only for the name…

  • Orange Alert

    Orange Alert, everybody. Avoid crowds. But go shopping. Keep the economy strong. Have an emergency plan in place. A central location for you and your family to meet in the event of, oh, I don’t know…an explosion? The deadly release of a new Ben Affleck movie? Wash your hands, please, but masks are for the…

  • Family’s Value

    Here we go again. A young, white, blond-haired blue-eyed woman is abducted, presumably by some dark-skinned nefarious person. The media play swells into hyper, almost orgiastic über-coverage. The military gets drafted to search for the damsel in distress, and, in the latest round, the governor calls for the death penalty and holds candlelight vigils. Excuse…