Up in Smoke

“I lighted a cigarette, and gave myself up to meditation.” Thus runs the most expressive quote from the entire canon of P.G. Wodehouse, who wisely leaves the actual content of Bertie Wooster’s meditations to our imaginations. I was reminded of the metaphysical aspects of smoking when the manager of my favorite cigar dealer—Sautter’s on London’s Mount Street—described a certain petit corona with a shrug and the simple words: “It’s a moment of reflection.” And yet the same reflective qualities can be found in a humble cigarette—as this timely deposition from The American ...

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

It has never ceased to amaze me that, as our stalwart editor commented to me, "€œit reveals much about our age that the term "€˜adult fun"€™ evokes pornos and strapons and ...

Vengeance is Mine

This might surprise you, but I wasn’t always such a mild, soft-spoken guy. Before my conversion to St. Francis of Assisi’s gospel of peace, you might have called ...

Gun Rights, the Militia, and Community

During the Cold War, conservatives rightly pointed out that the collectivist materialism of the Soviet Union was anti-human in the worst ways.  It elevated the state to ...

Is Driver’s Ed a Liberal Art?

Some immigrants assimilate more slowly than others. My best friend from childhood had parents from Abruzzi who lived in NYC for 40 years and never learned English"€”the need for ...

The Varieties of Anaesthetic Experience

It was a balmy New England dawn, in that brief slice of the year when our clime is as mild as Malibu's and the pine trees bend in sweet obeisance to the breeze.... On such a day, ...

Back in the Briar Patch

Like a catfish slipping off deck into cool, polluted waters, I’m back in NYC tonight"€”staying in an Orchard Street apartment rented off Craig’s List, taking a much ...

Nicotine and Me

Tomorrow I take my first driving lesson: New Hampshire be warned! I did once drive, in Baton Rouge between 1994 and 1996, having almost achieved my lifelong goal of getting a ...

Can Beagles Cause Blindness?

I know this is supposed to be a lifestyle column, but each week I seem to find out that one or more of the habits which makes my life liveable could also possibly kill me. Last ...

Do Try This At Home

The cultural contrast between intriguing guests and apparently brain dead yack TV hosts has John Derbyshire lamenting :    ” It’s not the dumbing-down ...

Sobering Thoughts

There's nothing to put a damper on your columns about food and wine like a grumpy old doctor who tells you have to lose 50 pounds. A dour World War II Navy veteran, he was the ...

When Johnny Comes Lurching Home

Perhaps the greatest compensation for trading cramped digs in Rome for a spacious house in the U.S. is that I have my beagles back. Susie and Franz-Josef are out back now, ...


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