Many years ago I was in Hall 15, The Leonardo Room of the renowned Uffizi Gallery in Florence. At one end of this particular room was, on an easel and…
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# Journal Entry
One of the more endearing images I have of a recent visit to Beijing is of a university student peddling down a street on a dilapidated Mao-era Tianjin “Silver Pigeon.”…
April 4 is Martin Luther King Day. Many writers will be penning another encomium to this great leader and visionary, with a lot of allusions to the prospect of an…
I hate morning television, in fact I hate most television. But I was up in the middle of the night with jet-lag, having flown fourteen hours to Hong Kong, so…
My second favorite book, after Homer’s Odyssey, is Moby Dick. They are both tales of men at sea, but there are not many other similarities. After I read Moby Dick I was hooked on whaling…
Years ago I did a piece on KPBS about a trip I made to the ole USSR. In it I related an encounter with a heavy, Nina Kruschev-looking, Russian woman…
I remember the very first full-length book I read. I might have been seven or eight years old and I was abed with a fever when I read Smilin’ Jack…
Bitch! That’s what I mumbled under my breath, straining not to let it out in an anger relieving shout. But I knew better; I was in a strange foreign airport, and…
I got a phone call the other day from a guy who knew my friend Bob. I hadn’t seen Bob for decades. He was a former professor of mine when…
As I write, this George W. Bush is probably checking over his last (thank you, Lord!) State of the Union address, to a union, the state of which, thanks to George W.…