We begin with Enola Gay. You probably know the story already, but here’s a recap for those who don’t. Enola Gay was the name of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Its refurbished body is on display at the Smithsonian and is back in the news thanks to the comically misdirected effort to purge government records and documents of words deemed “offensive” for whatever reason. As a...

Retirees vary widely in their approaches to life after work, so I’m not going to demean them by making one-size-fits-all pronouncements about the demographic of which I am a proud member. But there definitely exists a sub-group from which you hear a litany of complaints along these lines. “How is it that ever since I retired, I don’t have enough time for anything?” There’s no question that my...

Our lives have been A Tale of Three Cities. I will confess that one of them is more a region than a city, but I can’t resist the literary frame Mr. Dickens has gifted me with for today’s musings. I’ve been thinking about this three-headed Medusa ever since we returned from a long weekend visit to Houston where we lived for 13 years. The other two are New Hampshire which captures in its wide sweep...

In these perilous times, when disastrous new edicts are being pronounced, it seems, on an hourly basis, it’s hard to remember that there’s more to the newspaper than its international and domestic news sections. Despite the fact that I’m a serious book hugger, I’ve been neglecting the Books section of the Sunday New York Times, but one day a few weeks ago I sought refuge in its pages, where I...

I was at work on a personal piece for next week’s posting when I was derailed in a most fortunate way. Here’s what happened. We had invited some of our favorite people to dinner – Adrienne Lieberman and her husband Andy Thomas, along with Mark and Mary Larson. We had managed to go deep into the evening without venturing onto the Trump/Musk ice floe before plunging into those frigid waters. It’s...