Me, Count Vronsky? Ridiculous. And she, a middle-class government worker, was no Anna. But sometimes there is no stopping literary allusions from asserting themselves when the circumstances seem to align.…
The Enduring Theme The encounter of different cultures is perhaps the oldest, and most enduring, American social theme. It is not uniquely an American phenomenon, but one that applies to…
“Some years ago, my father came home with a carton of old letters that time and humidity had compacted into wads of barely legible paper. He announced that he had…
Is there perhaps an axiom, for politics, femininity, or both, here: Beware a woman who never changes her hairdo; she is probably incapable of ever changing her mind? I remember…
Out here in Hong Kong the BBC, beloved as “the Bebe” by some, serves as a largely reliable source of news and information for me. But every so often there…
Strangers On A Train Why did I do it!? Well into my thirteenth abstemious year and I light one up like a junkie who just lost his job and his…
Is this Pope trying to blow white smoke up our butts? It was habemus papam time again in Vatican City, and this time the Crimson Codgers went for what they must consider…
Pelagic ruminations on a birthday at sea It’s my first birthday at sea and it arrives in “Blood Alley,” somewhere about 1240 W and 340 S, off Wenzhou as I…
We straggle off the bus in a heavy downpour and, across the narrow river looms the domed building that has become iconic of the occasion of the first nuclear…
Acculturation The relationship between immigrants and American cities has, on balance, been a reciprocally beneficial one. Immigrants have found opportunity in the city, and in turn have enriched its culture…