This time of year, I’m drawn to think of the people who founded this country — no surprise there; it’s what the 4th of July is all about — and the kind of world they occupied while creating the form of government we have today.
She was very old and very sick, and she knew that she did not have long to live. This was a few years ago. She was the great aunt of a friend, and I ended up speaking with her for awhile, though we did not know each other.
The, um, member of Congress is gone, but his sorry tale should remain as a lesson: anything you do on the Internet, even when you think it is private, is there forever and can come back to bite you.
Okay, I confess it: I like the Harry Potter movies. No, I’ve never read any of the books, either for my own enjoyment or to children, the usual adult excuse for having read them. My association with the long Potter saga is limited to the movies. Fact is, I was late even to those, having seen the first few on DVD years after they were in theatres.
The day was sunny and warm at the Lake Placid, New York, horse show, the skies clear as can be. The altitude lent a certain dry coolness to the air — it didn’t feel as hot as it was — and made sunburn likely.
They say that mules are stubborn, but my money is on robins. Well, at least the robin that has been trying to build a nest on my porch light.
Why have we come to treat everything as if it were a sporting event? Come to think of it, why do we treat sporting events as we do? I can’t imagine that I’m the only one who wondered this while watching last week’s reaction to the good news that Osama had gotten popped in the noggin (and as a result learned that it was a mistranslation and the “72 virgins” are really “72 white raisins,” which ain’t much to get by on when you’re talking all eternity, even if you eat them slowly).
The email message was a happy surprise. A fellow in California, at something called the “L.A. Theatre Works,” was putting together a project (he did not say what) and wondered if I still have the original tapes (I don’t) from a radio report I did in 1983. His email note to me was above a long series of messages and replies he had sent to and received from others, in pursuit of the missing audio.
My cousin Alan in Missouri sends news that Harold Biellier has died. The report made me sad. Not because it was a tremendous surprise: Mr. Biellier was 90. Nor was he someone critical to my day-to-day existence: I doubt I’ve seen him even once in the last 40 years. I know I haven’t in the last 35.
The hot new word of 2011 is “bespoke.” If you listen, you’ll suddenly hear it everywhere. It used to be a perfectly good word, but by midsummer it will be threadbare and tattered from overuse. The wear is already showing.