On Sept. 6, 2007 my wife of thirty-eight years died from Mesothelioma.  It's a disease many have heard of but know little about. Neither my wife nor I ever heard of it.  We couldn't manage to say the word for months.  "Meso" is ca… Read full post »

     I'll never forget reading James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time at my parents' kitchen table in the suburbs of Detroit while the old city burned.  Tanks patrolled the streets where we once lived and the A&P where I worked as a teenager was destroyed.

   &… Read full post »

     It's one of those names the literate recognize but may not go out of their way to learn about.  That was true of me until I read Sarah Blakewell's excellent biography of Michel de Montaigne, "How to Live," which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, hit the bestselle… Read full post »

     Devotion is a paean to those who no  longer embrace the doctrines of their ancestors, but find themselves incapable of discarding them and replacing them with something "new".  Sound familiar?  The knowledge of what the old beliefs sustained and made possible i/… Read full post »

     It's the best story to come out of Israel in months--years--decades.

     A group of Israeli women called "We Will Not Obey" have begun to smuggle Palestinian women from the West Bank to the sea off the coast of Tel Aviv so they can swim.  For ma… Read full post »

My daughter is my heart.

She always has been, since the day she was born. Watching her grow and "expand" as a person has been the greatest joy in my life. I'm sure many if not all parents who love their children feel the same way, but that isn't any reason… Read full post »

     In the summer of 1967, yes, I'm that old, I came to New York City to find work as a journalist.  I didn't have a college degree and nobody heard of the school I attended.

      I did the usual, went to the offices of the New York Times, Time… Read full post »

     Maybe it was growing up Catholic in Detroit and belonging to the old guard who knew "Detroit" is the French word for "strait," referring to the river and the French were on top of the historical pecking order.

     Maybe it's the bread.

   &… Read full post »

     The most salient feature of what I think about labor unions, and "union workers" comes from personal experience--not a theory of "socialism" or "capitalism" or any of the rest of the intellectual mumbo-jumbo that is so often the basis for opinion in the matter.  (Th… Read full post »

     What I don't like about the Rule of Three is after two deaths how do you know the third won't be your own?

    So far for 2011 it's been my former business partner Diane, and my mentor and friend Joe Ellin from college.  Diane's death came a… Read full post »

     Anybody who was there will never forget the day Richard Marner punched Sister Francis in the face.  It was the seventh grade.  He knocked off her black and white bonnet, revealing her nearly bald head and floppy ears.

     The entire class gasped… Read full post »

     It's foolish to contend with the prevailing wisdom: all politics are local, but these midterms hold special qualities:  a) they are in the midst or follow the greatest recession since the great depression, depending on your point of view, b) they follow th… Read full post »

I worked for awhile at a famous old bar in New York City.  I can't say the name and won't confirm it if you guess right.  I still have friends who work there for the scumbag who owns the place.

While I was there the owner died, the last of a… Read full post »

My wife and I were travelling with friends in Central Asia.  We'd spent the day on a rickety bus travelling through the fabled Kiber Pass that connects Pakistan with Afghanistan.  We'd transversed the pass covered in red dust, lined as it was by the graves off all those who dared… Read full post »

The build-up was tremendous.  Fellini had already shown that movies could be literature, but could they also be truly surreal, and inspired by an itsy-bitsy piece of obscure literature written by Petronius in ancient Rome that made almost no sense at all?

I read about it in TIME magazine drooped… Read full post »

I watched most of the Ted Haggard documentary.   I'll admit, "emotionally" he won some respect and his wife won more.  If I'm going to err as a sentimentalist, this is the kind of case where I'm most vulnerable.

He obviously isn't a very "bright" man, but definitely personable, and you… Read full post »

I met the legendary Candida Donadio at a conference at the New School in NYC.  I was introduced by Hayes Jacobs, the head of the Writing Program at the school for many years. Hayes was my teacher for eight of them--without credit of course.  He was the best non-fiction and fiction… Read full post »

I attended the first meeting of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) at my campus, though not exactly.  At the gathering of roughly a dozen people, we decided to be called Students for Social Involvement (SSI) so we wouldn't be confused with the SDS boys down the road… Read full post »

I had a summer job on the line at GM in Pontiac, Mi.  They gave the worst job in the factory to the "college pussies," and then sat back and laughed when you failed at it.

I was assigned to the sanding shed.  The trucks came down the line after receiving a coat of… Read full post »

The first time I had an inkling I'm a subversive was in college.  I applied for the job as editor of the school newspaper.  It was the beginning of the anti-war movement.  I didn't know enough to conceal my sympathies.  My competitor promised to be a "team player."  You know… Read full post »

The demographics explaining Obama's rise are now in.  (See Salon, "Why Barack Obama is Now Electable" by Walter Shapiro.)

Interestingly, not much of it is particularly new if you've been following the election from an intuitive standpoint. If you don't know Obama's initial appeal was to the "mil… Read full post »

My wife and I were in couples therapy at a teaching facility in NYC.  We had two therapists, both women, and knew there were other therapists on the other side of a wall size one way mirror.  After two years, the therapy was going nowhere.  Both my wife and I were "posing,"… Read full post »

     This is the story I never thought I'd have to tell.  A year ago today my wife Joan passed away.  It is my spiritual belief she went on to a higher frequency that informs the entire earth.

     She contracted mesothelioma, a rare cancer caused by… Read full post »

This is the time when elections become the least interesting to me.  The merchants of neediness are out with their hands extended, asking, "What do I do, what do I do?"  Politics is another way to get attention by withholding themselves, and playing dumb. 

If what's happened so far, w… Read full post »