Latest work
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A Rome memoir
Read more: A Rome memoirRome in the 1960s. In August 1968 my father ferried me from Washington to New York and deposited me on a nonstop Pan Am flight to Rome where I would visit a woman I had not seen in two years: my mother. My parents had become estranged in 1966, and…
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A farewell to debris
Read more: A farewell to debrisPan Am 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland. Journalists miss civilian air crashes. They can’t and won’t tell you this, of course. That would be in macabre bad taste, all the worse in a politically correct era. Instead, they’re forced to bemoan wars, which they secretly adore — the longer, the better…
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Dead Dear
Read more: Dead DearA letter from Jane Austen to her sister. Notice that she does not say, “Hi there!” Dear is dead. Time for it to now as much as pack up two centuries of introductory conceit. Email’s telegraphic cool shot first, drawing blood. Mobile phone communication did the rest. Welcome, then, to Hi, Hi there, Hey, Hey…
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Sand slander
Read more: Sand slanderBeneath the sand, there is money. Insults, imprecations, and slurs arise from a variety of dank basements. Racial, cultural, or national, they focus on stabbing at the underbelly of those chosen as disliked. There is (or was) the obvious, Yid, from the word Yiddish for Jews to the more obscure, wop for Italians. Both are…
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Back to the future
Read more: Back to the futureTo many, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 was a harbinger of things to come. This month marks my father’s 125th birthday. Born in 1899, he came of age during World War I, a time of great global disorder. Nor did the war’s end stanch the disquiet. In…
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Goodbye to all that
Read more: Goodbye to all thatNo more human faces at the check out counter. In the early days of autumn, my friend and helper made a trip to my local Rome supermarket to pick up some necessary provisions. By American or British standards it’s a small store, perhaps only ten stubby aisles, but it stocks…
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