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Death and taxes

Ben Franklin’s comment about the certainty of death and taxes seemed true around our household this week.

Sunday morning, the 36-year-old husband of my wife’s niece died of cancer. My wife was there for the week prior to the death helping her niece tend to her husband and their four children as the inevitable approached. […]

Madhouse marginalia

No, I haven’t been locked up — so far at least. As noted in the last post, last week was hectic and a state Supreme Court argument this week in a major case have left little time for much other than bouncing between doing and stressing. Thus, a few pieces of linkage until my next […]

The girls are back in town

It was one of those hectic, and at times trying and irritating, weeks. But by Friday evening both college girls were home, bringing the “terrible trio” together for middle daughter’s 19th birthday this weekend.

While the noise and activity level more than triples, there also seems to be a corresponding increase in everyone’s feeling of […]

Keeping that string alive

The “illiterati” string continues. The National Book Critics Circle today announced its “Good Reads — Winter List” (formerly known as the “Best Recommended List”). As with the inaugural list, I don’t fare well — and I even voted this time.

I’ve read none of the top five in fiction. Moreover, the book for which I […]

Book Review: The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

When you get right down to it, we’re all in search of happiness. That may be particularly so of Americans, for whom the “pursuit of happiness” is an “unalienable right.” Rather than a metaphoric approach to the search, Eric Weiner took a geographic one. His efforts to try to find where people are happiest is […]