Posts published in “Essays”

You want your terrorist scares. The ISIS of the natural world resides in your backyard or, at most, the field beyond. We're talking cats. Cats…

I never had any children, for much the same reason that I never kept rabid weasels: I do not require the presence of small, toxic,…

My father worked the “industrial” side of what Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex. He ran a division of a major automobile corporation that made weaponry, or parts thereof, for the military. After he died, we found a letter addressed to him from a senior general he worked with.

Marcia came into my office a few days ago and said, “Have you seen the little gnome in Flower Pot Village?”

I thought she might be pulling my leg, since we are not gnome collectors, but lo, clinging with both hands to the edge of a large terra cotta flower pot in the assemblage of flower pots we call Flower Pot Village was a small Caucasian gnome, five-inches-tall, a happy smiling ceramic fellow with a white beard, pointy gold hat, turquoise jacket, brown trousers and black shoes.

I am surrounded by words: Newspapers, magazines, and mailings of all sorts mess up my desk, which is really just the southwest corner of this…