My father died when I was in my early 40's.  He'd been sick for over a decade so every time we saw him we thought it would be the last--until one year it finally was.

     His was the "closest" death I'd known so it still took me by surprise. … Read full post »

You walk into the bay filled with giggling bathers splashing water at one another.

It's a nice day, like in the brochure, the sun shines, the club packed with fresh guests and lots of rum.

Why are they all congregated here?  Why not go where nobody can see them?  Where they can be… Read full post »

This is the time of year she'd take a drive on a Saturday morning by herself.  I don't know where the place was, but she knew it from days gone by.

It was her job, nobody elses, all those springs after the snow melted and the dirt in the cement pots on the walls and… Read full post »

     On trips hitchhiking through Europe in college, whenever they picked me up in France and asked what I did, my answer was "Je suis un ecrivain." (I am a writer.)  It was the first thing I learned to say in the language.

     It was a lifetime ago… Read full post »

     What a relief to find a contemporary, incredibly informed writer who is not in the grips of the prevailing ideologies, and actually provides analysis.  I "discovered" Tony Judt hiding in plain sight in the pages of the New York Review of Books.

     I… Read full post »

     I was born with an Irish surname.  It's the kind of name they give black cops in the movies as a joke.  On St. Pat's Day my father and grandfather left the house with their green ties flapping in the frosty Michigan March wind and felt the-luck-a-the-… Read full post »

     I come from what will be called, if it is not already, the "crossover" generation.  My father went to college, my mother did not.  That was also true of my grandparents.  While my mother worked on and off between children until my father was… Read full post »

The following is a guest post from my friend Mercedes Arnao.  I hope my OS friends will welcome her.  Ben Sen 

     A few weeks ago my boyfriend and I decided to have a quiet Sunday. He retreated to the candle lit bathroom where he soaked in a tub of hot… Read full post »

      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 »

Our zeal does wonders when it is seconding our leaning towards hatred, cruelty, ambition, avarice, detraction, rebellion.  Against the grain, toward goodness, benignity, moderation, unless as by a miracle some rare nature bears it, it will neither walk nor fly.

Montaigne    &… Read full post »

   Builders make buildings, executives make companies, musicians make music, and I was taught writers produce manuscripts, not Adobe files.  To me books are dreams that take shape on paper.

   This one started four years ago.  I was willing to let the idea go,… Read full post »

     Note:  This is not meant to be "objective."  I'm not going to name Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.  They've gotten enough press, and I'll leave it to the official historians.  These are the people in MY top ten and you can call me any manner of n… Read full post »

    (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED) 

     My father ran into a problem  His plan for his retirement years didn't work out.  He'd married a woman much younger, but she contracted breast cancer and died leaving him stranded.  We didn't go to the funeral… Read full post »

The lady on the blog from Indiana with all the kids who's unsure of the old faith but you know won't take the risk; she probably shouldn't.

The conversation with Renie about when she decided not to be a nun any more.  The time she discovered she could think for herself.… 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 ain't gonna happen.

The latest NYTIMES/CBS poll says 82% of Americans blame Congress for the near shutdown of the government, and 72% blame Republicans. Obama successfully communicated the problem, and the majority of Americans got it. That majority does not I suspect include ideologues on the le… 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 »

     According to Carl Gustav Jung, a synchronicity is an event where the two worlds meet--the seen and the unseen.  It's a nexus, a "gateway," a visit to the matrix, totally inexplicable for any rational reason.  Many simply call them uncanny coincidence, deja vu, or ju… 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 »

     Starting from my last year in high school, the idea of leaving the house without a paperback in my coat or pants pocket was untenable. I read a novel every two or three weeks--sometimes more, sometimes less--a habit only interrupted by college when I was forced to read what "… Read full post »

     It's the unthinkable.  What nobody wants to imagine or accept.  A coalition of Arab states and Iran attacking Israel.  Until the downfall of Mubarak nobody would have predicted it.  Now the question is whether it is inevitable.

     Can… 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 »

     I have to admit it.  I lose it every once and awhile.  Okay, maybe a little more than that, but not all the time.  Okay, maybe...

     I used to write for money, not much, but enough to make a living for three years as a freelance, until I h… Read full post »