I promised myself I would not subject what was left of my audacity of hope to President Obama’s most recent State of the Union Address. I almost made it. I…
My mind kept returning to that last scene in Robert Towne’s screenplay of Chinatown (1974) when Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is slumped over the wailing horn of her car, shot dead, and…
French Presidents, and the women who love them? As I write this, the French politician sex scandal de jour involves France’s current president, M. Hollande, a man who will remind you much…
Director Ernst Lubitsch’s snide “I’ve been to Paris France and I’ve been to Paris Paramount. Paris Paramount is better,” has an element of truth in it, movie truth. The Paris…
Him: How many Vietnam vets does it take to screw in a light bulb? Me: I don’t know. Him: You know why don’t know? Me: No, why? Him: ‘CAUSE YOU…
Square Jean XXIII is a little park space at the west end of the Ile de la Cité in Paris. It consists of some trees and benches behind the apse…
Disclaimer: No ruminants or humans were sacrificed in the writing of this essay. And no disrespect is intended toward any religion or persons of faith. Well, maybe a little .…
Phissssssssssscht! The tour coach’s front door popped open like an airlock in a Star Wars spaceship. An assault of superheated exterior air immediately scorched my sinuses. Egypt air! Air that had…
In my old Seminar in Planning Theory I used to give my students a series of small writing assignments. “In one I would task them as follows: A director of…
Doc Martin, the BBC’s series about a London haemophobic surgeon who retreats to a small Cornwall coastal fishing village, Portwenn, as its sole general practitioner, can be enjoyed as simply…