A NEW YEAR’S LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT PART 1
YOU, DONALD J. TRUMP, ARE MERELY A TEMPORARY RESIDENT of The White House—which belongs to the American people; not to you, not to your cowered MAGA sycophants. And, like any … Continue reading
JIMMY WALES’ WIKIPEDIA
NAME THE OUTLIER AMONG THESE TECH ENTREPRENEURS: Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google), Elon Musk (X, etc.), Pierre Omidyar (eBay), Peter Thiel (PayPal), and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia). … Continue reading
FORSAKING MY USUAL HOLIDAY HIATUS PART 2
YESTERDAY I DESCRIBED WHY I’M NOT TAKING my traditional Christmas-to-New Year hiatus: It’s to maintain my sense of proportion in the midst of Trump 2.0. This maintenance continues here in … Continue reading
FORSAKING MY USUAL HOLIDAY HIATUS PART 1
LONG-TIME READERS, BLESS ’EM, MAY HAVE NOTICED my choosing not to take a traditional Christmas-to-New-Years hiatus. There are two reasons: The despicable actions of Trump 2.0 continue to cry out … Continue reading
THORNTON WILDER’S WORKS
I PERUSED A GOODLY NUMBER OF HOLIDAY READINGS, several of the “Putting Up With Uncle MAGA/Woke at Dinner” variety, one of schadenfreud (“Kennedy Center’s Christmas Eve Jazz Show Canceled After … Continue reading
MERRY CHRISTMAS! HAPPY (EARLY?) ALREADY HANUKKAH! HAPPY KWANZAA!
WHEN I WAS A KID, MY PARENTS GIFTED ME WITH “The World’s Great Religions,” a Time-Life set of six volumes, devoted to Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. There’s … Continue reading
RFK JR., SCIENCE, AND THE ATLANTIC PART 1
I WAS DISTURBED TO SEE THE ATLANTIC’S JANUARY 2026 COVER BLURB “The Most Powerful Man in Science” accompanying a beatified image of a bead-fondling Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is this … Continue reading
FROM BIRD DROPPINGS TO HOLIDAY KISSES
WHAT A GREAT HEADLINE FROM NPR to Scott Neuman’s“How We Ended Up Under the Mistletoe,”December 17, 2025. Here are tidbits gleaned from this appealing etymological essay. Origins. Scott Neuman describes, … Continue reading
MAINTAINING BALANCE—AND MEMORY
TWO RECENT EVENTS—ONE A NEWSPAPER GUEST ESSAY, THE OTHER PURELY PERSONAL, resonate with “An Uneven Pendulum,” SimanaitisSays, December 7, 2025. E.J. Dionne Jr. offers “Trump Confronts a Backlash of the … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 
RFK JR., THE ATLANTIC, AND SCIENCE PART 2
HERE IN PART 2 WE CONTINUE TIDBITS BEGUN YESTERDAY gleaned from The Atlantic magazine’s Profile and Summary of “The Most Powerful Man in Science,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. RFK Jr. … Continue reading →