It wasn't long ago that
the quest for self-knowledge meant analyzing the psyche as opposed
to, say, the colon. But that was before Katie Couric showed us
hers on… more
Perhaps I should start by saying that I have never had a dog I would have wished
to replicate. There was Nappy, the poodle-shaped blur of my toddler years. Sweet
little Woof, never the brightest bulb in the canine kingdom. Lawrence, the labrador,
who barked at suitcases on wheels. My sister's Irish setter, who gathered up
the ripest of our unwashed laundry and slept in it. I won't bore you with the… more
To get to the house where Stephen and Megan Scheibner live with their seven children, you skirt past Allentown, Pa., and drive for another half-hour into the hills above the Lehigh Valley. The Scheibner place is on Blue Mountain Road, a few miles past a forlorn establishment called Binnie's Hot Dogs and Family Food. Standing behind their white clapboard farmhouse, where the backyard unfurls over… more
Imagine for a minute that the anti-Castro
militants in Miami get their way and, 40 years from now, Elian
Gonzalez is still on our side of the Strait of Florida. Imagine
… more
In the summer of 1994, a surgeon named J. Bruce Moseley found himself engaged in an elaborate form of make-believe. Moseley had 10 patients scheduled for an operation intended to relieve the arthritis pain in their knees. The patients were men -- most of them middle-aged, all former military guys -- and they weren't ready to consign themselves to the rocking chair yet. So they had decided to take a risk and volunteer for a study that must have sounded,… more
Early December found me on a cookie-baking spree. I bought a sleek new
hand mixer; I clipped recipes for pfeffernuesse and Finnish chestnut fingers, and when the
time came, I started rolling out the old family Christmas cookies by the dozen. I was up
past midnight, with flour in my hair and colored sugar on the floor and the… more
The
notion that kids grow up too fast these days is a complaint so familiar that it can seem
both true and meaningless at the same time. It has the status of received wisdom, and
received wisdom doesn't usually inspire anybody to make the case for it. You may as well
present… more
A couple of weeks ago, the morning after I gave birth to my second child, a particularly
garrulous nurse stopped by my room and asked if I had been given an epidural pain block
during labor. When I told her I hadn't, she was so instantly approving I half-expected her
to slap a gold star on my hospital gown.… more
The illustrations spread out on my desk look
like freeze frames from some 1940's melodrama. In one, a man who might be Fred MacMurray,
his brow furrowed in a way that strongly suggests limited acting range, turns his back on
an elderly woman wearing a martyred expression. In another, a young woman is shadowed by a
… more
When
it comes to living large on pilfered cash, Martin Frankel -- who is accused of making off
with $335 million -- deserves all the attention he has been getting. Here was a guy nervy
enough to make a to-do list on which item one was launder money. A guy who secured the use
… more
