My family’s holiday was the same every year. On December 23 or 24th, we would drive from our home in Kenmore, N.Y., to spend Christmas Eve at my father’s parents’ house in Salamanca. This was in the early 1950s, and there were no superhighways; from Kenmore we drove into downtown Buffalo, where we picked up […]

July 28, 2004 While Chris Zenowich and I were working together, the agency hired another writer. He was an older gentleman and he had flair. He drove a white Bentley with vanity plates that read “WRITER.” He claimed relation with a famous actor and producer. He smiled warmly as he gave us advice, leaning back […]

April 2002 I have a co-worker, and friend, who attends a Greek Orthodox church. And over the years, we have chatted about the fact that the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity celebrate their holy days on different dates. In those years when I am oafish enough to ask her how her Easter was, on […]

June 2002 At some long-ago point in my career, I found myself in a room with three partners in crime trying to come up with a name for a family of products — a wash, a moisturizer and a “sealer” — used for cleaning the nether regions of incontinent nursing home patients. I don’t know […]

June 18, 2005 On June 8, 2005, Mr. Rush Limbaugh, on his nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show, informed radio listeners that Democrats have more fear of Christians than of Al Qaeda, or even of nuclear weapons launched from North Korea. I was perplexed. Because my wife is a registered Democrat, and I am a Christian, […]

March 24, 2005 Spring has arrived in Central New York, with the traditional change from snow to freezing rain. The old snow remains, dirty and glazed, and the trees, though still bare, do not look altogether dead. Buoyed by the change of season and prodded by the need to make a living, I drove over […]

This one cost me a reader, but that was not such a bad thing. * * * December 3, 1997 It was raining on Sunday morning, a cold rain, and so I decided to delay my walk until later in the day, when I could join Laurie for a dry, non-slippery indoor mile or two […]

I wrote this some time in the 1970s. The conversation with the Honda garage actually happened; some times life hands you the best lines. * * * It was the bills I think. First there was the bill from the power company, and then the telephone company, and then one for auto insurance. I rarely […]

I don’t remember what prompted me, but in 2008 I read Fugitive Days by Bill Ayers. Perhaps I saw Hunter S. Thompson’s comment that this was “a very good book about a terrifying time in America.” I ordered a copy through Abebooks. The jacket told me that Ayers was the author of A Kind and […]