The day Neil Armstrong bounded down from his lunar lander to the surface of the moon, my father, like many others of his generation, was moved to tears. 

I belonged to a very different generation, though I had a powerful emotional reaction to the moonwalk. I was a 19-year-old college kid… Read full post »

His name was Frank. He looked odd to 11-year-old eyes, not a bit like the other counselors, all trim and sun-tanned, hanging out with each other. Frank was round and pale as a volleyball and always stood off by himself. He wore khaki Bermuda shorts and green knee-high socks. Wire-rimmed glasses… Read full post »

Levon Helm, drummer, singer and guiding light of The Band, died Thursday at 1:30 p.m. 

I'd sing him a song, but I can't sing. Hours after his death, I heard a song on the radio that he recorded not too long ago. To me, it's his elegy. I've wrapped my memories o… Read full post »

I always wanted to be a writer like my dad. He was a sportswriter. Ever since he was a kid, he was mad about sports. After he got out of the Navy in 1945, and for as long as he lived, he made sportswriting the center of his life.

I hated playing… Read full post »

NFL training camp will begin within days. That means football is back from the bargaining table. This makes me happy. But there was a time when the arrival of training camp was a  pure misery for me.

Many years ago, in  the summer of 1966, I was… Read full post »

I was a 19-year-old college freshman who felt unduly burdened by my father’s insistence that I get a job as well as attend the occasional class at Fordham University in the Bronx in the autumn of 1969. 

Being a 14-year-old putz wasn't easy for someone who'd never planned on being one. But the mysterious introduction into my teenage body of strange hormones, the sudden emergence of an outsized honker, a generous splash of zitz and the resultant blast of teenage lonlieness provided less… Read full post »

My father cleared his throat and fixed me with a serious eye.

“Let’s go down to my office,” he said.

I was only 10 years old, but I knew trouble was on its way. Downstairs was Dad’s domain. None of us were expected there, unless we had a load of laundry… Read full post »

Edwin Newman, a network news reporter whose wit and high professionalism made being a network news reporter seem a gallant, even alluring, calling, has died at the age of 91.

The New York Times obit describes him as being “genteely rumpled, genially grumpy,” a man of “constituti… Read full post »

Being a 14-year-old putz wasn't easy for someone who'd never planned on being one. But the mysterious introduction into my teenage body of strange hormones, the sudden emergence of an outsized honker, a generous splash of zitz and the resultant blast of teenage lonlieness provided less… Read full post »

A senior administration official said in an e-mail message that the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, called the White House shortly before 6 a.m. and woke the president with the news.-- The New York Times

The Catholic Church is bringing back a theological Golden Oldie called "plenary indulgences."

To Catholic Boomers like myself -- Caboomers -- indulgences were nothing less than a ticket to Heaven -- a free pass from purgatory's fires  for you and yours, a bailout for your very soul. Indulgences… Read full post »

Though I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy -- I still don't have a Facebook page, prefer CDs to MP3s, wish snap-brim fedoras would come back in style  -- I have to admit that thing Amazon's been selling a ton of is my nominee for Transformative Technological Piece of the year.… Read full post »