"The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food." -Cyril Connolly So, this past Sunday in Manhattan P and I stopped into an Irish pub a few blocks from the Museum of Natural History for a cold one. Realizing that having a drink on an empty stomach was a bad idea, Peg noted an advert on the wall advising that the bar offered hot dogs. We ordered a couple, figuring at $2 a pop they were going to be forgettable, but also hoping that no New York establishment would ser

"The safest and most suitable form of penance seems to be that which causes pain in the flesh but does not penetrate to the bones, that is, which causes suffering but not sickness."- -Saint Ignatius Drove up to the lake for this morning's deposition. One of the blessings of the post-Covid age in my profession is that I can do my job wherever there's an internet connection. Plus, I just needed the hour of silence in the car to ponder. I've spent six years now mostly cooped up

"You love a lot of things if you live around them, but there isn't any woman and there isn't any horse, not any before nor any after, that is as lovely as a great airplane, and men who love them are faithful to them even though they leave them for others. A man has only one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely plane he loses it to, there his heart will ever be." -Ernest Hemingway 8.5.1994 Thirty-two years ago today, on a steamy, gray Gulf Coast afternoon, I fl

"You’ve got to expect things are going to go wrong. And we always need to prepare ourselves for handling the unexpected." — Neil Armstrong, 2005 Back after a long weekend in NYC. I have to admit that I never took the computer out of the bag until I had to pay a bill on Monday morning. One can see the headlines there, the cupidity and kakistocracy of the present moment--one just can't feel it the same way in Manhattan, as if the whole city is protected by a dome of political s