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 ...

Almost every guy my age knows at least a few things about General J. Pershing. One was he was often referred to as “Black Jack.” Another is he was the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in WWI. A third is he carried pearl-handled pistols. And last, on July 4, 1917, laying a ...

Last week I wrote about being in NYC and watching Tiny Tim’s wedding on The Johnny Carson Show. As weird as Tiny Tim may have been, my watching the show was even weirder. Or more exactly, while I was watching it I was in one very weird mood. My weirdness had nothing to do with Tiny Tim, ...

One of the beauties of being retired is how my time is just that — MY time. Aside from the occasional appointment with this or that sawbones and having bills to pay, there’s almost nothing I have to do and nowhere I have to be. As a result, I am a-chronometric. Or to put it in plain ...

I’m in Nori’s cafe, sitting on the river side, coffee in one hand, pen in the other, my yellow legal tab on the table. There’s nothing unusual about that, since I do it every day, barring out-of-area travel, out-of-control contagion, or out-of-planet intervention. But a couple of ...

While I can’t remember how old I was when I first read the Jules Verne classic “Around the World in 80 Days” I do remember falling in thrall with its protagonist, Phileas Fogg. Fogg was the perfect British gentleman, who made a 20,000 Pound bet with members of his club that he could ...