At the tender age of fourteen, I abandoned hearth, home, tube, and fridge and went off to boarding school for three years.  When I arrived at Williston Academy in the fall of 1964, I was a chubby lad of 160 lbs., but after three months, I was twenty pounds lighter and… Read full post »

With the nationwide release of Toy Story 3 this weekend, a whole new generation of kids will be emptying their parent's wallets for Woody and Buzz Lightyear action figures, lunch boxes, underwear, can openers, and whatever other junk Disney-Pixar can plaster their pictures on.  And the producers… Read full post »

WASHINGTON - GOP senators emerged today in nearly unanimous opposition to the larceny reform bill passed in the House earlier this week by a margin of three votes.  The thirteen-hundred-page piece of legislation would place severe restrictions and oversight on the unlawful or fraudulent removal… Read full post »

Last week, my wife called me into the living room to watch Buzz Aldrin's performance on Dancing with the Stars.  Aldrin, the eighty-year-old former astronaut and second man on the moon, graced the stage with all the style and brio he displayed while clomping around the lunar surface in 1969.&nbs… Read full post »

Nostalgia, like arthritis and constipation, is a curse of the elderly. Some get teary about the house they grew up in or the joys of their high school years.  Others yearn for their first car or the songs that accompanied their courtship.  Personally, I pine for the days when vampires didn'… Read full post »

"Nothing in Excess" was the inscription on the Temple at Delphi, and despite the fact that it closed for business a few years back, I doubt many people would disagree with that sentiment today.  Yet in the convoluted world of food and dieting, this simple concept has been overshadowed both by… Read full post »

On Tuesday, I received a letter from Lawrence Bacow, president of my alma mater, Tufts University.  He asked me to become a participant in the school's Student Ambassador Program - well, me and 93,000 other alumni, but I'm still honored and humbled by the offer.… Read full post »

We Americans love our mythic history more than our actual history.  This is understandable since real history can be ambiguous and unpleasant while national myths are reassuring and optimistic.  They are feel-good fantasies promulgated to boost civic pride and, like all myths ancient and mo… Read full post »

In recent years, the most popular concept in the advertising world has been viral marketing, the use of social networks and word-of-mouth to increase brand awareness and sales.  Lately, I've been besieged by a different form of advertising that I like to call sterile marketing, the targeted prom… Read full post »

Having reached the milestone of three score years, I find myself faced with the challenge of how best to spend my remaining time on Earth.  My first task will be to drag out this period for as long as possible, wringing every last nanosecond out of my potential lifetime.  I will… Read full post »

This is a continuation of John Blumenthal's post, How Jeff Brawer & I Spent Our Summer Vacation –- in 1969  at:http://open.salon.com/blog/randomidiociesblogspontcom/2010/02/03/how_jeff_brawer_i_spent_our_summer_vacation_--_in_1969

Read that part first.

Before I pick up the narrati… Read full post »

It's hard to know why a man turns to a life of crime.  A broken family?  Grinding poverty?  Hanging out with the wrong crowd?  Or maybe he's just a rotten seed, destined from birth to be a blight on humanity.

I have no excuse.  My family was stable and… Read full post »