Thanks to hackers who spirited my personal information into the dark web, I’m getting weird emails. Some of the senders write revealing details about me as if we’ve known each other for years. “Delete that stuff,” my hardware guru advised. “They’re crooks pretending to kno

Life is interconnected, making sorrow and absurdity cousins. Sometimes that interconnection invites laughter.  The reaction might seem perverse but it can also be enlightened. In times of great adversity, if we look, we might see clowns cavorting in the margins of the shadows. The an

If the coronavirus is a hoax, as some preachers claim, I must admire the people who engineered it.  Over 30,000 casualties in this country, not to mention the 160,000 deaths worldwide. To accomplish this task takes more staging than one of Andrew Webber’s musicals.  So far, no one

When I was a kid In the 1940s a movie ticket cost 25 cents. For that price, I watched two features, a cartoon, and a newsreel.  World  War 11 was in full swing at the time, so I saw far too many images of death and destruction than was good for me, particularly the images of the Red

One positive outcome resulting from this pandemic is that I have more time to be creative. Missing a doctor or dental appointment suits me. I’d rather stand in front of my computer writing a blog.  Nonetheless, finding myself with an additional hour, recently, I decided to do a lit

As April 23 is William Shakespeare’s birth and death date, being alert to language adaptations inspired by the coronavirus seems appropriate. One group of new words pertain to how the illness has changed our daily lives. A second are words the President has ascribed with new meaning

The trouble with a mystery is that while it piques curiosity, It also invites suspicion. Imagining bad motives on some other person’s part makes compromises difficult and erodes a sense of community. Anyone who’s followed these blogs, even occasionally, has encountered one of my d

It’s true.  No one is ever too old to learn.  Since I’ve begun my search for an agent to represent my memoir, I’ve discovered few of them are interested in writers until they’ve made their mark in the profession. In fact, the field is so competitive, that agents rarely send

During this pandemic, I keep reflecting on the opening lines of Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times and the worst of times.  The words suggest that fate has a fickle side.  For example, thieves might be happy that wearing a mask in public is acceptable.

Twice each day while I was quarantined because a neighbor was awaiting coronavirus test results, a nurse came to my apartment to take my temperature. One morning, I forgot to put in my hearing aids, so I didn’t respond to her knock until she pounded on the door like a lumberjack. Wh