This is not the column I intended to publish this week. In fact, I had already submitted “My 21 for 2021,” once again making s series of outlandish, and hopeful humorous, “predictions” for the year just started. Then, on January 6, 2021, President Trump incited a mob, thousands laid [...]

Being Jewish and not Christian, Christmas is not my holiday. Religiously speaking, that is. But December 25 has always been an important day of the year for me. As far back as I can remember and up to age 17, Christmas was a day when my family would be [...]

Over the last fifteen years, I have written close to 200 “Looking Back” columns. The title of every one of them, up to now, has begun with the word “My.” But it’s not good to be too rigid, so this time is different, and I have changed the “My” [...]

This article was originally published in the September 23, 2020 Concord Monitor. Starting at Sunset on September 18, Jews around the world, and in New Hampshire, welcomed the Jewish New Year, 5781. Services were held that evening, and they were real even though they were virtual. Then came the [...]

I’m forever blowing bubbles, Pretty bubbles in the air Song my Grandmother used to sing Boys State, according to its website, is “the week that shapes a lifetime.” New Hampshire has participated in this American Legion Program for 73 years, but not this year. Cancelled “with deep regret, due [...]

Growing up in Claremont, what did I know about Indians? The answer is not much. I vaguely knew that New Hampshire had Indians, and the name of the lake where we had a cottage, Sunapee, comes from Algonquin words; and I knew that the word Monadnock comes from an [...]

I never had a schoolmate of color until I got to college in 1957. Reg Lindsay, my law partner and friend years later, did me one better. Born and raised in segregated Birmingham, he never had a white schoolmate until he got to Harvard Law School in the late [...]

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. Bob Dylan (1963) On February 22, I went to New York City to see my grandson Jacob, who works for an advertising agency, and my granddaughter Susie, who is a sophomore at Barnard College. We met that afternoon at the [...]

As you probably know, you can buy devices from Apple, Amazon, and others that enable “streaming” on your television. This is particularly useful if you don’t have cable because it isn’t available on your road or because you’ve got better things to do with your money. If you do [...]

I don’t usually write about presidential politics in these pages, but what else is there to talk about these days? I suppose I could pick the coronavirus, but I’d rather not. So I’m looking back to candidates I’ve seen with my own two eyes, from times past and present. [...]