F**k Anthony Bourdain
Everybody reading this is likely aware of Anthony Bourdain’s first book, Kitchen Confidential, in which he exposed some of the – pardon the pun – less savory aspects of the food prep world. In it, he discussed everything from how…
Monumental Cemetery of Milan
About 25 years ago, I started playing a computer game called “Civilization”, which was released by MicroProse, a company founded in part by a man named Sid Meier. Meier is a historian and musician as well as a computer programmer.…
Surreal
Author's Note: My mother passed away May 6, 2013. I wrote this, and its companion piece, "Bittersweet", in those first months after her death. A few weeks ago, we reviewed the word "bittersweet". Today, we will discuss "surreal". Spending weekends…
Bittersweet
Author's Note: My mother passed away May 6, 2013. I wrote this, and its companion piece, "Surreal", in those first months after her death. We have some excellent words in English: single words that can substitute an entire paragraph of…
Consciousness
At some magic age when he’s not quite a man but no longer a child, he will learn that I was a reluctant fraud. For now, he looks at me with doe-brown eyes so clear and curious and ebullient that…
A Jewish Soldier in WWII
On July 22, 1944, about seven weeks after the beaches of Normandy had been taken in D-Day, the 28th Infantry — the “Iron Division”, as World War One’s General Pershing named it — landed on that same beachhead. The men…
