As you’ve heard or seen with your own eyes, it was amazing. It was three times the size of the inauguration. It was peaceful and positive. It was the Woodstock of marches!
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Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
Resolution 2017: Back to the Couch
As I sat down to make New Year’s resolutions a few days ago, I realized that the usual suspects for this operation – intemperance, impatience, cattiness, career, cardio – were banding together in self-defense, fending me off with their collective flabby triceps. What? They cried in protest. Leave us alone! How are we the problem? […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
Chicken Soup for Post-Election Gloom and Doom
Over the past weekend, I ran into a couple of writer friends in the coffee shop downstairs from the Politics and Prose bookstore in DC. Are you here for the reading? I asked. I was there to see Beverly Lowry present her new book, Who Killed These Girls, about the yogurt shop murders in Austin, […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody: The Audiobook Column, with Recommendations
Through the 1960’s and 70’s and until his death in 1985, Hyman Winik commuted five days out of seven to his office at Brookhaven Textiles, located on the 10th floor of 1412 Broadway in Manhattan, at the northeast corner of 39th Street, where the phone number was 212-695-0510, chanted continually by the switchboard operators in […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
Hillary Clinton v. Donald Trump: What’s the Difference?
Though I have voted in every presidential election since Carter/Ford in ’76, I have often felt that the difference between the two candidates ranged from not much to slightly more than that. Once they get to Washington and get whopped over the head by the checks and balances, not to mention the lobbyists and the PACs, […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody, Featured, Lifeline
How to Celebrate the Day of the Dead
In honor of the Day of the Dead, we re-post this favorite column from our archives, originally posted October 30, 2013. Drape a small table with a cloth in the favorite color of the person you loved who has died. Adorn it with candles, flowers (marigolds are traditional) and framed photographs. Set out some favorite […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
The Mystic Secret of College Tours
This past weekend I took my daughter Jane, a high school junior, on the first of what will surely be many campus tours. She is my fifth and last child to go to college, if you include the ex-stepkids, and I realized early Saturday morning that I know something about this process that I didn’t […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
A Novel in the Drawer
The other day, I “finished” my second novel. I use the scare quotes because I’ve finished this novel about a dozen times already. Even the pitch that tells what the book’s about has been endlessly revised, but here’s the latest version:
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
The Stepmother’s Tale
Once upon a time there was a little boy with hazel eyes, a dimpled chin, and freckles scattered across his wide cheeks. His parents split up when he was three and his dad went to live on a farm in Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania, where the boy and his sister got to visit him on weekends. […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
My Trip to New Orleans Was Decadent and Depraved
Author’s note: My favorite travel story of all time is Hunter S. Thompson’s The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. If you’ve never read it, you should. It really puts things in perspective. Because my son Vincie the Wonder Poodle (don’t you wish I was your mom so you could have a nickname like this?) […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
How to Grow Old
I just devoured an advance copy of Ann Patchett’s forthcoming novel, Commonwealth, which deals with the topic of blended family. Though I’m not up on all the details of Patchett’s history, I do know she’s from a family that emerged from divorce and remarriage with a slew of step-siblings. Though a work of fiction, Commonwealth […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody
Secrets of the Engagement
When my 27-year-old son Hayes called a couple of months ago to confide that he was in the market for a diamond ring, I wasn’t surprised. He and his brother Vince seem to go to a wedding every couple of weeks. Their demographic has begun the march to the altar, and Hayes and Maria have […]
Posted inFeatured
Morning Traffic on a Strange Planet
Does this ever happen to you? You are sitting at a red light in morning traffic, half-listening to the news on the radio, half-trying to decide how to juggle the elements of an ordinary day: the meetings, the appointments, the overscheduled children, the dirty house, the dreaded phone calls: the insurance company, the plumber, the […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody, Featured
I Served on a Baltimore City Jury and I Don’t Feel That Great About It
At the beginning and end of each day, the judge implored us not to discuss the case with anyone. But when he finally dismissed us from the dusty climes of the Mitchell Courthouse back into our lives, he lifted the ban. In fact, he urged us to tell our friends, neighbors, and families what we […]
Posted inBohemian Rhapsody, Featured
How to Change People’s Lives
I heard over the holidays that my college advisor, a Russian History professor named Abbott Gleason, known as Tom, died on Christmas Day after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. The fact that I took even a single history course in college, much less ended up a history major, was completely this man’s doing.
