I’ve always taken it for granted though I’ve cursed the long lines that result from staff shortages. Other than have a tooth pulled, I’d do anything to avoid the Post Office.  I buy my stamps from the grocery store and mail my packages at a stationery shop around the corner fro

In David Copperfield, Wilkins Micawber reveals the secret to financial happiness: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds], twenty [shillings]’and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, res

When I was a child, before television, I looked forward to attending Sunday matinees with my mother. If a film was popular and held over for a second week, waiting the extra time for a new title to appear on the billboard felt like a disaster. Forever Amber was held over, I recall, an

While my mother’s death feels like blisters under my skin; while there are riots in the streets– a reaction to police brutality; and while the pandemic continues to rage, killing over 100,000 people in the United States, I’ve spent my evenings without the news and chosen to

Like pandemics of the past, Covid-19 will probably leave lasting social change in its wake.  A person doesn’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that contagions usually alter the course of human life. The Black Plague broke the back of the feudal system, for example. (“How Pandemi

The current Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to numerous conspiracy theories concerning why it happened. Though we know little about the virus as yet, these theories have flourished like toadstools after a sodden rain. Thanks to the internet, they have spread to remote places like Gym

Women’s contributions to history and in particular to religious history are almost invisible compared to the recording of masculine exploits. What made Dan Brown’s, The Da Vinci Code so scandalous was that he relied upon a theory which posited that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were lo

Is the Covid-19 virus masculine or feminine?  That’s a conundrum the Académie Française settled recently. The decision fell to the feminine, “la.” How they drew this conclusion would be an interesting discussion to hear. No matter. The decision is final.  The pandemic, as I�

“Sorry I didn’t respond to your email sooner. I’m recovering from a mild stroke.”  The voice at the other end of the telephone belonged to a writer whose play-reading I’m producing. Naturally, I gasped to hear his news. Already, he’d faced so many obstacles in his life it

Democracy can’t be left in the hands of the rich, I’ve decided.  No, I’m not a socialist or communist or any kind of “ist.” But this pandemic has demonstrated with needle-sharp clarity that Scott Fitzgerald was right.  “The rich don’t think like us.” If anything, he