We’d intended to walk to a coffee shop near my residence to enjoy bonbons with our beverages. Unfortunately, the morning rain altered our plans. Instead, we chose to settle into two Queen Anne chairs by a picture window in the lobby of the building where I live, our hot drinks fresh

Working with an editor on my memoir taught me to appreciate how rapidly language changes. Like floodwaters, it flows, alters course and refuses to be controlled. The French have tried to apply rules to their native tongue, hoping to preserve its purity, but snippets of English breach

Frankly, the younger generation’s meme against their elders strikes me as tame. “OK Boomer,” sounds like a capitulation, not rebellion. What? No clenched fists? No finger?  Hand gestures are out of the questions, I suppose. The feat would require a person to give up scrolling o

Not long ago, I grew weary of seeing my news feed treated like a public kiosk. I love promoting my friends’ achievements when they publish a book or have an art show, but commercials are fair game for exploitation. One day, for example, I attached an announcement for Just Read It, m

So far the American Bar Association has rated eight of Donald Trump’s nominees for the judicial bench as unqualified. The number isn’t unprecedented for a president, but our dear leader has little tolerance for criticism. We shouldn’t be surprised that he has decided to bar the

I read an article the other day that praised Donald Trump for his extraordinary leadership. The author congratulated the president for his attempts to revive the coal industry, his rollbacks on climate change regulations, his tax reforms that made the super-rich wealthier and his immi

Recently, I shared an article that argued if the Warren/Sanders wing of the Democratic party didn’t consolidate, the mathematical certainty was Joe Biden would win the nomination. A Sanders supporter wrote back to say he couldn’t trust Warren. She’d once been a Republican. Havin

While in public life, I worked with a district attorney who was a thoughtful man.  His politics leaned toward conservatism, but that bias seldom interfered with the way he aligned facts.  Objectivity of that degree is rare. For many, emotions rule. Upon occasion, he and I discussed

My father lived with my mother and me until I turned 7.  Every Sunday, he and I would jump into the car, always an Oldsmobile, and we’d drive to the center of town to buy the newspaper.  If the first vendor we met was black, my father drove on, until he came to a white man

I sat down to coffee, recently, with a couple who’d lived in Albania after the  Russians withdrew. The husband was serving as U. S. Ambassador at the time and during our conversation, his wife recounted a story about an event she hosted for some of the country’s political lea