I am currently on the longest vacation of my life, seventeen days. It included a few days in Barcelona and then other delightful spots along the way to a trans-Atlantic cruise to Miami. Knowing that once the excursions stopped, we’d have nine days of sailing, I packed my Kindle with…

As I write this, I am cruising through the Mediterranean on a Virgin ship, a voyage I purchased three years ago during the early months of the pandemic, when prices were low. …

It’s been a long time since I’ve been a reviewer — the most thankless task in the world. (I did it for about eight years from 2008–2016.) But I’m going to take a break from my usual social commentary blogs to talk a little about Christmas albums and then review…

Back in 2020, Joe Biden ran for President saying he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump, positioning himself as a centrist and the savior of democracy. In the end, he did beat Trump, but the results were not until four days after Election Day, which fed —…

It was twenty years ago, 2003, when I sat in my accountant’s office as he looked over the numbers I was presenting to him. I had lost my steady job the year before (the company went under) and, because I was running my own (non-lucrative) business on the side, I…

Given that we have just been through yet another record-setting summer heatwave (worldwide, July was the hottest month on record, since temperatures have been measured and tracked), I thought I’d revisit Al Gore’s seminal tome, which has been sitting on one of my bookshelves since I first read it after…

You see, even the title of my essay is a problem. Just typing it induces guilt. Don’t I have a lot to be grateful for? In recent years, the gratitude movement — as I will call it — has really taken off. At the top of the list for most…

“The job is not worth doing for what they pay. The job is not worth doing for the grief. But it is worth doing for the principle.” These are the words of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in a speech to the Bar Association in 2001. That’s not a typo…

A couple of years ago, when I bought my first car (in my fifties), I signed up for Sirius XM radio, mainly so I could go back to hearing Howard Stern a couple of decades after he left terrestrial radio. …