When I was in my twenties, I dated a girl (whom for the sake of everybody’s privacy I will call Gilly, in case she is still alive somewhere) from a strange family.  They were a timid bunch, and I found out why when I met Gilly’s mother.  She was a large woman, with a presence …

sol·ip·sism  noun: the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist. Origin: Latin solus (alone) ipse (self) Friends who are gone My 50th high school reunion is coming up next year (class of ’72, Padua Franciscan High School, Here we go Bruins, here we go!).  I do not contemplate …

I was walking our dog Bandit the other day past Florence Field, a run-down Little League diamond near Dallin School in Arlington. As ratty as Florence is, it will always be a special place for me, as many of my son Ted’s Little League games were played there. For a few minutes, Bandit and I …

When I was growing up, Easter was always a big deal.   The religious aspect was important:  From Palm Sunday throughout Holy Week, we heard the reading of the Passion by all four evangelists while surrounded by purple-shrouded statues of the saints (all statues and crucifixes were hidden by church law from Passion Sunday until Holy …

Sorry for the lack of order, I just remembered that this was sitting on my desktop. I wrote this on September 21st, 2020, after Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death. Her bravery and strength in trying to hold on until “this nightmare is over” (her words, or words to that effect) might shame those GOPers who are …

I wrote this as a comment to an article in the Washington Post the morning after the insurrection on Jan. 6th, 2021. The ease with which Trump has manipulated the GOP base to his own ends should surprise nobody. It is the logical endpoint to the “Southern Strategy” the GOP has employed since Nixon, using …

“White supremacy is not a shark; it is the water”.   I saw this quote on a sweatshirt for sale in Provincetown this past summer.  It summed things up so elegantly that I tracked the source, and traced it to the website of a Minneapolis poet and activist, Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre.  If you are interested, …

I am trying to post in roughly the order that things were written, but entropy and forgetfulness may mix things up a little. The following was written at 2:30 AM on November 23rd, 2020. Like many people, I hadn’t been sleeping well since the election, and wake-ups in the middle of the night were the …

This bit was written in early April of 2020, when we were still all coming to grips with the reality of COVID. A house down the road from us has a campaign sign in the front yard that looks quaint these days.  It reads “Any functioning adult: 2020”.  Indeed, there is a common theme in …

I wrote this as a letter to the Boston Globe after the 2016 New Hampshire primary. I honestly thought T***** didn’t have a chance at that point. But as P.T. Barnum pointed out, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. If it walks like a duck… Well, the New Hampshire primary …