August 22, 2021 – 1:38 pm
Well, Henri has come ashore well west of the Outer Cape, and while I’m sure there are some pretty nasty conditions in Connecticut, we’ve got nothing more out here than stiff breezes, perspiration-inducing warmth and humidity, and some rough surf. The sun is even shining, sort of.
I’m glad to be able to start getting back to normal operations here. I haven’t really written much since the election. At first it was because I was, quite frankly, just too dispirited: the nasty shoulder injury I’d had back in the summer had made it difficult to type, and the forced discontinuation of my […]
August 5, 2021 – 12:38 pm
Still here. I’m anticipating, any day now, a long-awaited conclusion to a stressful process that has caused me, as a matter of prudence and caution, to keep a low online profile for the past several months. (I will explain later, but at this point I don’t want to jinx anything.) Lord knows there’s plenty to […]
I’m getting ready to put things back to normal here, but I probably won’t be posting anything new just yet. Thank you all for your patience.
I’ve reopened the site for now, but may soon have to take it offline again for a bit. Sorry about the weird situation here.
April 13, 2021 – 12:34 pm
We’re still on a break here. I do hope to be back in another weeks or two. Thanks as always for coming by – and do feel free to browse our archive, or try the “Random Post” link at top right.
I know it’s been awfully slow around here lately. It will likely be that way for another few weeks, I’m sorry to say, and I may even take the blog offline for a brief interval. (If that happens, feel free to write me and I’ll explain; my email is still the same old obvious one.) […]
“The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.” – Herodotus
February 22, 2021 – 1:26 pm
Here’s Michael Anton (with whom, in 2018, we had a brief exchange in the linked series of posts starting here), writing recently at Claremont Review of Books: The vast majority of those who went to the Capitol did so without a plan, but they did have a goal: to be heard. Which was also the […]
February 18, 2021 – 3:42 pm
Sorry to have gone all quiet here again. We are getting our house ready to sell, and having lived here since 1982, it’s a huge task. By the time we get to the end of each day — which is when I usually have some time to write — we’re whipped. I’ll post up interesting […]
February 17, 2021 – 6:09 pm
How terribly sad this is. I really don’t know what to say… perhaps later. For now I’ll just quote Charles de Gaulle: “The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.”
January 14, 2021 – 6:10 pm
From our e-pal Bill Keezer comes a handy checklist:
December 25, 2020 – 2:03 pm
Merry Christmas, everybody! Sorry to have been so shtum lately; I seem to be in a kind of limbo, just busying myself with reading and musical work. I’m sure I’ll perk up soon.
December 8, 2020 – 10:30 am
… Mark Chapman took the band away. R.I.P. John Lennon, who transformed the world of music, and so the world.
December 2, 2020 – 10:13 pm
I haven’t written much lately — I’ve been too busy with work and with personal matters, and frankly I haven’t had much to say. I’ve been thinking a lot about where matters stand, here in the senescent West, as this pivotal year winds down, and have been doing a lot of interesting reading — but […]
November 26, 2020 – 11:42 am
Best wishes to all of you. This year has been a difficult test, and we will be tried even more severely in the months ahead, but we still have much to be thankful for. Take a breath, and focus on gratitude.
October 27, 2020 – 4:57 pm
Today I saw my shoulder surgeon, Dr. Laith Jazrawi of Langone Orthopaedics, for my six-week post-op followup. The result was gratifying: everything is fine, with impressive progress toward full range of motion, and I no longer have to wear that bloody sling. I am also cleared to drive again, which is enormously liberating. I’m able […]
October 2, 2020 – 3:30 pm
Sorry to have been so neglectful here. I’m recovering normally, but am still supposed to keep use of my right arm to a minimum for another week or two, and am living in a sling. Typing is slow and uncomfortable. Meanwhile the lovely Nina had surgery yesterday to remove a basal-cell carcinoma from the bridge […]
September 13, 2020 – 12:00 pm
Shoulder surgery tomorrow, 9/14. I’m glad to be getting it done, but my right arm’s going to be in a sling for six weeks, so it’s going to be hard to write. Back when I can. Update, typed with left hand only, Monday 7 pm: All done. Supine and resting at home, generously medicated and […]
August 30, 2020 – 10:56 am
Essential reading: Michael Anton explains, more persuasively than I’ve read anywhere else, why we must have a Trump win in 2020. You may not fully understand the scope of the calamity that awaits us if the Democrats consolidate their power; read his essay and you will. Here.
August 19, 2020 – 7:11 pm
Our August hiatus continues. I’m a little hampered by the painful shoulder (broke a toe yesterday as well), and there have been the usual distractions of this late-summer season. (There’s a lot going on in the world, as always, but I’m taking a little break.) What time I’ve had for writing I’ve been using to […]
August 10, 2020 – 12:33 pm
Sorry, readers, for the quiet around here. (August is always a bit of a hiatus for the blog.) I’ve been back and forth to NYC to get the shoulder looked at (will head back for surgery in a few weeks), and have been distracted in other ways as well. I’ve also been working on some […]
August 3, 2020 – 11:43 am
Off to NYC for a couple of days to have the shoulder looked at. Back soon. Update, 8/4: Surgery it is; seems I tore it up as badly as I had feared. September, most likely.
You may have noticed an uptick in mobs surrounding drivers in their cars, and an increasing willingness in drivers thus imperiled simply to step on the gas. “What shall we call this?” wondered someone on Twitter. The answer, of course, is obvious: Accelerationism.
Sorry (again) that it’s been so quiet here. I’ve been nursing this shoulder injury — due to insurance-coverage issues I’ve had trouble getting an MRI, and will end up traveling from Wellfleet to Connecticut next week to get it done — and although it’s been getting a little better, it’s still been uncomfortable to type. […]
Slipped on a puddle in the kitchen last night, caught my right elbow on the counter as I was falling, and tore my right shoulder to pieces. Back from the ER at Cape Cod Hospital — lovely people there! — but will need MRI and orthopaedic consultation. Judging by the tearing and crunching sounds as […]
Sorry it’s been so slow around here — summer doldrums, mostly, and lack of anything interesting to say. (We also have our son Nick, whom we haven’t seen for months due to the Wuhan Red Death, paying us a brief visit.) Should be back with something soon. Thanks all for coming by, and please feel […]
Haven’t looked at the news much for a week or so. Did I miss anything?
From John Hirschauer at National Review: “More Men Die, But Women Bear The Brunt“.
Here’s a sharp little item on the miscalculation of risk.
The apt metaphor, I think, for what we have done to ourselves in response to this virus is the tourniquet. Leave it on too long and gangrene sets in. You can watch your own body begin to die and rot and stink. “Ah, but it’s just a limb,” you say. “It’s worth losing a limb […]
It’s Mothers’ Day. Here was mine. I miss her.
Longtime readers will have noticed the lack of substantial content here recently – just little odds and ends, mostly. It’s mostly the Groundhog-Day monotony of this new life: the days, and the news they bring, never vary much. There is very little vitality or energy in the air, or on the air — just the […]
Here’s the question that interviewers should be putting to governors: “If, in normal times, you were to announce as a matter of executive fiat that people must close their businesses, could not assemble in groups over a certain size, and must stay home except for travel you deem essential, it would seem an absurdity. People […]
In times of crisis, it’s important to do what we can. One of the ways good citizens have responded to our current health emergency has been by sewing their own protective face-masks. Given that many of you, I’m sure, would find it easier to shove a camel through the eye of a needle than to […]
April 13, 2020 – 11:57 am
When I get older, losing my hair Many years from now… Or, as it happens, today. My, how time does fly when you’re having fun. As always: natal salutations to Guy Fawkes, Thomas Jefferson, F.W. Woolworth, James Ensor, Butch Cassidy, Sir Arthur “Bomber’ Harris, Robert Watson-Watt, Samuel Beckett, Harold Stassen, Stanislaw Ulam, Eudora Welty, Howard […]
Just to remind you, readers, as you contemplate the millenarian tableau unfolding before us: yes, there is also a comet. (Of course.)
In response to Friday’s post about the different emotional reactions of Democrats and Republicans to the Wuhan-virus pandemic, our longtime commenter, the indefatigable JK, posted a link to a thoughtful essay on the topic. I though it worth promoting to a post of its own, so here it is.
March 27, 2020 – 12:23 pm
Make of this what you will:
Here’s a brief video from an infectious-disease specialist. Well worth watching.
Having survived our trip to Charleston (a beautiful place, as we expected), we are now hunkered down in the remote precincts of our little peninsula in the North Atlantic. Self-isolation comes naturally to me. Confining myself to the basement music studio, a comfy chair with a book to read, and contemplative hikes in the nearby […]
March 11, 2020 – 12:00 pm
The lovely Nina and I are off to Charleston, SC for a few days. (We’d heard it’s nice, so we thought we’d go and see for ourselves.) Back next week.
Och aye. (Full screen recommended.)
I haven’t commented much on this Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. Clearly it is a serious issue, but it is just as clear that it is being whipped up as much as possible by our domestic media to create fear and chaos, in the interest of hanging a millstone around Donald Trump’s neck. When the swine flu […]
February 29, 2020 – 10:05 pm
We must note the passing of Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest minds of our era. He died yesterday, at 96, after a fall. Read about the life of this extraordinary man here.
February 14, 2020 – 11:22 pm
I’ll ask your forgiveness once again for the lack of substantial posts here over the past few weeks. Regarding the political scene, I’m finding it awfully difficult right at the moment to summon up the will to comment on any of it — not that there isn’t plenty I could say, but at this point […]
February 11, 2020 – 10:21 pm
There are times when it seems more important to me to read and think than to write, and these past weeks have been one of those times. I do apologize to those of you who come by here regularly, and I promise that these lulls are always temporary. But I hate to send you away […]
February 3, 2020 – 5:03 pm
I was shocked and saddened just now to learn that Rush Limbaugh has been diagnosed with “advanced” lung cancer. Mr. Limbaugh, a brilliant analyst of the American political scene, has most importantly been, for decades now, a vital brake (to the extent that such a thing is possible) on the entropic forces of the American […]
January 31, 2020 – 9:21 pm
The Senate has voted to shut down the Democrats’ impeachment stunt, and the U.K. has officially left the E.U. It’s nice to see things work out now and then.
January 26, 2020 – 1:07 pm
I’ve been a little preoccupied this week with family matters and other offline distractions. Back soon.