I have discovered that the ride on the train from Manhattan is precisely the length of time it takes to make a cursory scan of the hard-copy Sunday edition of the New York Times.   It is a daunting mass of pulp material, and even subsidized by ad revenue, it cost $4 bucks. Of […]

I’m in the middle of All Hallows- and getting to it caused me to have to get through the Eve to it, with 60,000 costumed goblins. It was the start of the busiest weekend of the year for Mahattan, with Halloween, the New York Marathon, and the Election on Tuesday.   Actually, the Goblins this […]

29 October 2008   Calculators   There is a lot of money being spread around in the last week of this endless election, even though everyone seems to think it is all sewed up for Senator Obama.   The Senator is going to have a half hour infomercial on all the principle networks tonight, with […]

28 October 2008   Devil in the White City (The White City, Chicago, 1893) There is hope abroad in the land. I saw it in the faces of the people holding blue signs in the median of the highways up north. There is despair, too, in large measure because that change is coming and no […]

27 October 2008   The North East Limited   A young friend of mine attends a prestigious New England School, one of the old Seven Sisters, and I have been meaning to pay a visit. The realization struck me a few weeks ago that this year was flying fast, and given the accelerating nature of […]

We are bearing down on Halloween here in New England. There are some great stories from campus, about a haunted suite in one of the curious old buildings.   I’ll give you the short of it; which is to say that a sad girl killed herself there and never left. The college is a small […]

I brought too much crap, again. You would think that I would be getting the hang of this traveling thing by now, but apparently not. The Vermonter is pulling out of the stop at BWI airport by the time I got my stuff strewn around me in some order.   Business class is one of […]

23 October 2008   If…   If only AOL had not done something to their version of webmail, I could insert a picture of the smoking hole where the Marine Barracks near the International Airport in Beirut had been, 25 years and a few minutes ago.   I don’t know what they are up to. […]

22 October 2008   Sunspots     It wasn’t the carbon dioxide. It was sunspots.   Thank God. It wasn’t my fault. I am not responsible, and I can go back to worrying about creeping socialism. It is a good thing. The Carbon Nazis were on the point of dictating the minutia of how we […]

I take my editorial responsibilities seriously, like a single malt Scotch, neat.   Accordingly, I was hard at it long before dawn, compiling the Winter Edition of the Daily Bugle, the flagship publication of a professional organization of current and former Secret Squirrels.   It is a delicate business. We tend to be a very […]