Perhaps the most memorable character from the First World War is “The Red Baron.” Manfred Von Richthofen died about 11 AM on Sunday, the 21st of April in 1918. There is almost nothing about his death that is not disputed, the exact time, the manner of death, even who shot him. But there is one …
I generally share my poems with a few friends before I mail them out. A sample audience, as it were. Because of this, I’ve been asked how I came to write the enclosed, as the voice and tone are different from poems I’ve written lately. Perhaps the following note, written to a friend and editor, …
My mother is slipping slowly now. She has no sense of the real world around her. Yesterday, she told my sister that she is flying. When sis asked her where she’s flying to, Mother answered, “To heaven.” I find myself in this strange world that my wife Phoebe calls, simply, a death watch. I’m …
I was always disappointed that I wasn’t beaten during high school. That’s because I’m Catholic. Catholics are supposed to be beaten by nuns, or at least have little scars on our knuckles to prove that we took piano lessons. So it was with some relief that yesterday I had this recovered memory. The nuns hated …
J. D. Salinger died on the 27th of January. He is best known as the author of one of the most critically acclaimed novels of the twentieth century, The Catcher In The Rye. A contributor to such magazines as The New Yorker, Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post, he made many notable contributions to literature, …
I am a Roman Catholic. I was not surprised last month when I read of yet another pedophile priest. Nor was I surprised by the cover-up. But I was shocked to hear that two boys, ten and fourteen, were administered a solemn oath, on peril of their immortal souls, not to reveal that they were …
I read the other day about the famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, the duel in which Hamilton was mortally wounded and Burr politically ruined. This tragedy is a bit of a mystery. No one can say why, at some point, they didn’t withdraw from the duel. But I have a good guess. …
I read the other day about the famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, the duel in which Hamilton was mortally wounded and Burr politically ruined. This tragedy is a bit of a mystery. No one can say why, at some point, they didn’t withdraw from the duel. But I have a good guess. …