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 not black-tie outings and champagne."€ Indeed it does. ...

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 me… contentious. Provoked, I acted rather ...

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 mythic proportions.  It denied the value of individual ...

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 it never arose. I guess I"€™m another sort of ...

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, a man of my years climbs from the coverlets and thinks: ...

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 needed vacation from hazardous trees, menacing highway ...

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 Ph.D. before I got a license"€”which has long since ...

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 week it was eating and drinking. I responded by cutting my ...

The cultural contrast between intriguing guests and apparently brain dead yack TV hosts has John Derbyshire lamenting :    ” It’s not the dumbing-down that bothers a lot of us fogeys so much, it’s the ...