My Roman cats
My daughter Julia sprang out of bed the other morning declaring that she’d had a dream that we’d taken our [...]
Buone cose
Language is at its best when it spits at by-now universal idioms. France of another era insisted it would never [...]
“I want to die”
My friend’s line had me by the throat: I want to die. I get it in phone calls and in [...]
Because you can
Since the West went to war to excise its two cancers, Nazism and Communism, its moral compass malfunctioned, jiggered by [...]
Keeping it real
California is an Officially Weird Weird state. I sometimes get the feeling it was colonized by disciplinarian aliens who tried [...]
On Kissinger
My father roundly disliked Henry Kissinger. Hindsight suggests this was prompted, at least at first, by the young Kissinger's more-than-willing [...]
Vengeance unleashed
Israel makes war under the cover of a legacy of victimhood. With impunity and at times indiscriminately, it attacks all [...]
Divorce or un-divorce?
An old friend recently filled me in on the details of a circle of friends and acquaintances that goes back [...]
The taste of mustard
As I was sitting at the table, someone said, “Have I ever steered you wrong?” I looked up to see [...]
The lunatic
I am the madman of my apartment block. I have this propensity that is entirely un-Italian: I leave my front [...]