Here’s a Christmas ad from those mid-century magazines that has stuck in my head for the past 50 years. I have to salute the…
A Pictorial Recipe for Plum Pudding | Advent Calendar, Day 1
I had the good fortune to grow up in a family that kept Christmas very well, and this year, I will be sharing some…
Let Them Eat Fluff
This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in North Shore Sunday in February 2007. When state senator Jarred Barrios tried to have…
The Story of Alice Linfield White
This is the text of a talk I gave at the Melrose Human Rights Commission’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Day Dinner on January 20,…
The other side of CERN
When people think of CERN they generally think of the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs particle and maybe black holes or even the…
Rapid City, Gateway to the Black Hills of South Dakota (1932)
This is one of a big stack of travel brochures that I acquired when I was about 10. I don’t remember where I got…
Wedding rings for the unwed mothers of Louth
Here’s a fascinating puzzle. I get the bare bones of it. My grandfather was the village doctor in Ireland from the 1930s to about…
Strangely Enough, by C.B. Colby
This book fascinated and terrified me when I was a child. I loved reading it and re-reading it, but I knew the stories would…
Best Motoring Jokes, and a house in the country
My grandparents lived in a big house in the village of Louth, seven miles south of Dundalk and just a few more miles south…
The Other Wise Man
When we were kids, my father used to read us A Christmas Carol aloud, a stave each night, while my mother baked Christmas cookies…