Blog
Campus Silos Then and Now
I recently learned that 538 W. 114th Street in Morningside Heights was to become The Black Residential Brownstone for Columbia College. The story, in the Columbia Spectator, made no mention…
Read MorePaid death notices – a shrinking newspaper’s new profit center.
“Hello, Sweetheart, get me obits!” was the headline on a blog I posted on June 10, 2020, as the country’s death toll from Civid-19 had reached a then shocking 115,017.…
Read MoreLet’s Remember Pearl Harbor
Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy,” 81 years ago, is little remembered. But it still resonates, along with Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 6, 2021, as…
Read More“Hidden Maryland: In Search of America in Miniature”
Excited to announce the publication of my new book Hidden Maryland: In Search of America in Miniature. For eight years, from 2005 to 2013, when it folded, I wrote columns…
Read MoreTough Times, the Fourth of July, and a story “too good to check”
These are tough times, no doubt about it. Extreme weather related to climate change. Worst inflation since 1981. Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine. The unraveling revelations surrounding the Jan. 6…
Read MoreRecalling Watergate and “Woodstein” after 50 years
June 17, 1972 was not Dec. 7, 1941, nor was it Sept. 11, 2001, or Jan. 6, 2021. But it remains a date that will live in infamy, and in…
Read MoreChasing Carl Bernstein
Journalists of my generation and acquaintance are having a memoir moment. Peter Osnos, who covered Prince George’s County, Md. for the Washington Post before I did and went on to…
Read MoreJobs for Seniors? You Bet!
There are so many positions for seniors these days, you’d think that ageism was a thing of the past. From my LinkedIn feed, here are just a few: The Atlantic…
Read More“The Best is Yet To Come” — but When?
The marque of the old Orpheum Theater in Saugerties, N.Y. displayed this hopeful message for several weeks after I took this photo on May 24, 2021. The theater, opened in…
Read MoreMurderous Memories: Tulsa and Volozhin
Two massacres, 21 years and 2 continents apart. Tulsa, May 31-June 1, 1921. Volozhin, May 10, 1942. The survivors didn’t want to talk about it. They wanted to spare their…
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