Clean Cups

This morning my daughter climbed into my bed and prodded my shoulder. I was already awake but pretended to sleep, adding an exaggerated snore for emphasis, “Wake up time, Daddy,” Natalie said. “Wake up time.” I snored again and was rewarded with a giggle. Little...

The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.   We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were...

A Little Touch of Harry in the Night

It was Sunday night and my wife and I were having cocktails at Musso and Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard. Using the mirror behind the bar, I watched an older man putting the moves on a twentyish platinum blonde in a tight red dress who reminded me of Jean Harlow....

Like Summer Grass

“So, what do you do?” the well-heeled man asked me. I was in the middle of munching on a canapé so I held up a finger and continued masticating. As I did so I remembered that, in France, it’s considered rude to ask people what they did for a living. But we weren’t in...

Karma Comes For the Archbishop

Two days ago, the news broke that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington D.C., had been accused of molesting a 16-year-old altar boy when he was a New York City priest in the early 70’s and that the Pope had removed him from public...