Mark Twain reputedly said that “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” Whoever said it, it was never so true as the current molasses-pour of the materiel of warfighting for Ukraine. No tanks, then tanks. Still pending: fighter jets that U.S. President Joe Biden worries might stray into…

I like to imagine that I emerged into the world to the tune of a new hit, the silky chords behind Nat King Cole crooning “When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by if you smile,” putting words to the theme of Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” back in…

Yesterday being Groundhog Day, it put me in mind of Bill Murray, whose movie was released 20 years ago this month. My encounters with him when he won the Mark Twain Prize were both scary and funny. But fun is the operative word, even when he was banging on my…

With the seating of the 118th United States Congress earlier this month, we are in for a bumpy year. The endemic here and war over there stretch on through a long winter in the world. About 10,000 a week stream across our border. Shadow jockeys ready at the gate to…

We carried the precious cargo, ashes of another transcendental voyager, as we approached the gravesite up the hill. On our way, a great marble crypt loomed large, the perfect advertisement for the cemetery. It was George Gershwin. Imagine the evening entertainment when the gates closed. It seemed like karma to…

Near the turn of each year, in “Household Words” and “All the Year Round,” Charles Dickens published his Christmas stories. The Inimitable is gone. Instead, we are treated to treacle from the Hallmark Channel. This must have been cooking in my head last night like an underdone potato. When I…

The five-fold or more escalation in costs for housing and higher education are unsustainable for the average American. In a recent column, I suggested we need radical reforms in these sectors, as well as in the domain of our regressive taxation. Top-bracket income tax rates fell by 50 percent or…

The first Thanksgiving was a pathetic affair between starving pilgrims and starving Native Americans. Hard to improve on that. There was no turkey, wild or otherwise. Flash forward, tumbling centuries like dominoes, and we have hungry homeless and ravaged reservations. The big dog is an equal-opportunity joker. Draught and fire…

As with all post-traumatic stress, at first there is shock: dulling, almost blissful, the sensation of escaping something horrible — like an operation or Hurricane Nicole — sweet like Oxycontin before the inexorable pull of addiction kicks in. The bitter pill of midterm angst burns the esophagus all the way…