The first presidential debate of 2024 is now history. I wrote the following piece as a kind of prequel to that debate, something separate from analyzing that event in the way so many pundits have done in the last several days. Let me take you back to where this whole odd political tradition of questionable value was born. In September 1960, I left the only home I had known since infancy, our...
This will be brief because my brain is not completely rewired after a trip across six time zones. The day after we returned from our trip to London, I heard an interview with an “expert” on jet lag. Her recommendations were a mix of sensible suggestions about controlling caffeine intake and insanely complex protocols for moving your biological clock in fifteen-minute increments, beginning weeks...
If you haven’t read Proust’s sprawling novel Remembrance of Things Past and you consider yourself a serious reader, it’s time to get to work. In the early days of Covid, I created a list of classics, particularly lengthy ones that I wanted to immerse myself in during that rare period of enforced isolation. Even though I had read the book almost half a century earlier, I remembered so little I...
My wife, Rosellen Brown, retired from her teaching position in the graduate writing program at the School of the Art Institute on May 12th, which also happened to be her 85th birthday. She had logged 28 years in that position, following 13 years at the University of Houston and a shorter time at Boston University. Add to that a number of workshops and residencies, most prominently 13 years at the...
The circus came to town this past weekend in the form of my son-in-law Ben Kintisch, all pumped up to perform the cabaret version of his musical called Life Review: The Hospice Musical. Those of you who are my Facebook friends have seen my postings about the event over the last few weeks, encouraging people to buy tickets for his house concert at our apartment. A little background. Ben has...