I think T.S. Elliott’s best-known lines are “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” They are, of course, his best-known because they seem the only ones anyone knows. But poetic snottiness aside, last Saturday I couldn’t have cared less about how the world ...

People who are cool in dicey situations we refer to as having nerves of steel. If anyone defined my sang froid — or more appropriately, my lack of it — they’d say I have nerves of tinfoil. It’s not that I fall to pieces under stress. Usually, when the going gets tough, I rise to the ...

Doc McHugh, Kookie and I are sitting in Nori’s cafe, with Doc talking about his time in Colorado. Suddenly, he stops talking and stares off into into the distance. “What’s up?” I say. “Colorado,” he says. “What about it?” I say. “I think that’s a Spanish ...

In my freshman year of college, I became an existentialist. Or at least I thought I did. See, I was a bit confused since I wasn’t sure what existentialism was. Then again, it seemed neither did anyone else. But since it seemed like the thing to be, what the hey. Existentialism, per se, ...

I first witnessed Temporal Deceleration in the winter of 1965. If you’ve never heard of Temporal Deceleration, don’t feel bad cuz I just made it up. So what is it? TD is the feeling you have when, due to societal changes, the rest of the world zooms off into the future, leaving ...

The phone shrieked me awake, jarring me out of my dream of tropical paradise and into the reality of a frigid Adk January morn. I looked at the clock — 0930. What terrorist was invading my dreams and my wool-shrouded lair at this ungodly hour? “Hello,” I mumbled into ...