According to an article in The Atlantic, “Sudden Russian Death Syndrome”, rich, influential people around Vladimir Putin and in the greater Russian orbit seem to have developed a nasty habit of getting dead. In case the hyperlink above brings you to a paywall, here’s an excerpt from the article that lists a few of the […]

We live on East Street in Middletown, Connecticut. On the west side of East Street, there’s a neighborhood, Sylvan Run Village, in which Eddie loves to walk every morning. Through that neighborhood, there’s a stream that flows north. Since I don’t believe in gravity, I don’t find that particularly troubling. But I did want to […]

In the United States, we’ll celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday of this week. Like all other things in the United States, Thanksgiving, too, has become subject to politicization and myth-making. According to Britannica: Thanksgiving is modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (Pilgrims) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people … Plymouth’s Thanksgiving […]

In case you missed the memo, kids, we’re in deep kimchi. That’s right. According to this measured and highly objective headline in that paragon of levelheadedness and evenhandedness, The Washington Post, “World has nine years to avert catastrophic warming, study shows.” See what I mean? We’re on the brink of an apocalyptic something or other, […]

I made a brief reference to a story I’ll recount here in an earlier post. It warrants elaboration here because the subject of planning seems to have crept into many of the conversations I’ve been engaged in of late, including this one with my friend, Jim Vinoski. The notion of planning always troubled me. It […]

I’ve written about my depression before. But since this is Mental Health Awareness Month — and since every month should be Mental Health Awareness Month — I want to revisit the topic. In that earlier piece, I wrote my depression was characterized by stark, unrelenting terror. It resulted in a kind of hypervigilance, an exaggerated […]

As the obsessive language freak I happen to be, I’m always sensitive to new expressions creeping into the vernacular. Most frequently, those expressions are meaningless; that is, they don’t actually express anything of substance. But they’re valuable for what they signal. And they signal four things about the people who use them. Those people: Likely […]

I was sitting at my desk the other day with a characteristically blank look on my face. Anne walked by and asked, “What are you doing?” I said, “Nothing.” “You’re actually doing absolutely nothing?” she asked. “Is that even possible?” “Well, since you seem to be rather insistent about it, I’m drifting,” I said. “Drifting?” […]

When I visit schools to share my children’s books, the students always ask, “How do you know anyone will like them?” I say, “I don’t. But if I don’t write and publish them, I’ll never know.” When I write fiction for adults, the adults who read it always ask, “How do you know anyone will […]

In 1999, I was working at a small public-relations firm in Avon, Connecticut. My dentist was in the next town east, which, oddly enough, is West Hartford. (Everything is relative.) Exiting I-84 on Prospect Street, I drove north on Prospect, intending to turn left onto Farmington Avenue, the street on which my dentist’s office was […]