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After all these years, I finally laid eyes on Yawgoo Valley. End prose. Begin pretentious analysis of the writing. I like that opening sentence. It’s full of promise, mildly intriguing, and inspires a host of useful questions in the mind of the reader. Where is Yawgoo Valley, and what is it like? What special meaning does it hold for the narrator? Why did the narrator take so long to visit? And now what happens

The large wooden sign that greets visitors to Magic Mountain includes the motto “Where skiing still has its soul.” I am a veteran skier and I have paid attention, so I know what this motto means. It means ancient, slow chairlifts. But nevermind that. I had a lovely day at Magic Mountain, located in central Vermont, a drive of at least 2 hours from pretty much everywhere else, including my house. I enjoyed

In my publishing job today, a client asked me to confirm the number of fingers and toes on the average frog. And the research shows that the numbers are four and five. Meaning, four finger- or toe-like digits on the front feet, and five such digits on the back feet. That’s 18 total. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., a horde of Visigoths is dismantling the Federal government of the United States. What should we cal

Who among us can sing the song, name the pets, deconstruct the car, the kitchen gadgets, the feet? Do the vitamins and cereal remain for sale? I don’t know. The Flintstones, derived from Ralph Kramden and his cohorts, began as a cartoon for adults but persisted as a show for children, which is how I knew them. A zillion episodes were made, each traversing the same general plot. Fred and Barney are working stiff

I recently re-watched Horns of the Nimon, a Doctor Who serial from the 1970s, starring Tom Baker. The story is a sci-fi update of Theseus and The Minotaur. Rearrange the first two syllables of Minotaur, mangle them a bit, and you get the crosswalk. Like most Doctor Who monsters, the Nimon is pure camp nonsense. Somebody wears an oversize buffalo head on his shoulders, walks with a wide stance and wobble, and catches

I am hardly the expert, and my research certainly is limited. Nevertheless, I will nominate a booth at the entrance of the Daytona Beach Flea Market as the central nexus of the MAGA world. On display and for sale are a tremendous variety of branded merchandise—mostly banners and tee shirts, but also pins, buttons, hats, shot glasses, parasols, and so forth. Everything is printed on fields of bright red or bright blue

Greetings to you from Dania Beach, Florida, which is an entire continent away from the fires raging through Los Angeles. Here in Florida we are enjoying the typical balmy weather that attracts all the Yankees in winter. The palm trees that I see outside the window are swaying in the gentle wind. Meanwhile, communities such as Pacific Palisades have been burnt to the ground, thousands now evacuated and homeless, among

My grandfather, Reuben Berman, died in 2004 at the age of 96. He left behind six children, eleven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren, with more descendants to arrive over the years. Reuben wrote extensively about all sorts of topics, including his career as a physician, his love affair with the clarinet and bassoon, his exploits in Europe during World War II, and life with Isabel and family. He helped found

About 100 years ago, the Old-guard Geologists were confronted with an uncomfortable question: How could horses have crossed the Atlantic Ocean? Turns out some fossil-diggers had discovered matching fossils of a horse species on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Similar matching fossils were found across the Atlantic and other oceans, too. I imagine the O-gGs shuffling nervously and scratching their heads until they c