When I say I am an old New Yorker you can take that literally. I was born under Mayor Jimmy Walker in 1932, the year Walker fled the investigators of his corruption, and I grew up under the great Fiorello LaGuardia, who saw us through the Depression with a gruff...

It seems I've known Molly forever, at least for the fifty six years that I have been married to my wife. My wife met Molly in high school, where they suffered the terrors of Mme. Farley's French class together. They became close friends: Molly, the fashionable but flighty odd girl,...

This has been a month when we have all been absorbed by the passing of the famous, the powerful, and in my case the personal - the death of my firefighter nephew, John McNamara who died as a direct result of breathing in the toxins at Ground Zero as he...

I grew up with a generous and loving father who had a temper from hell. It is not surprising that I bridle my own temper and use it sparingly noting the havoc that my father's temper caused in our family. Like Obama I am a man who prefers to reason...

John McNamara 1965-2009

This has been a summer for famous people dying. The iconic anchor man Walter Cronkite and Frank McCourt, the notable Irish American author of Angela's Ashes, recently left the scene. I write here of another Irish American's death: my nephew by marriage, John McNamara, called Johnny Mac...

This has been the wettest month of June in recent memory. Is it a coincidence that the word rain is a jumbled version of Iran where civilization has had a nervous breakdown? Is our climate having a breakdown as well? Climatologists point to global warming as the cause of this...

The other day I sent an email to the President of Bard College, my Alma Mater, protesting an award sponsored by the college that was restricted to novelists under 39 years old. It wasn't about my feeling excluded from that competition. I'm well over 39 but I am not an...

Every time Dick Cheney pops up again, he drags along his entire history of 9/11 references to make his case for the continuing use of torture and Guantanamo -- save one, that 9/11 happened on his watch -- that his FBI, his National Security Chief, his CIA failed to take...

Scattered gunshot: Six bullets. Why Elizabeth Edwards went public, why I care about Lindsay Lohan, what sport Obama should play, and other existential questions you want answered by a grouchy old man.

1) It seems perfectly clear to me why Elizabeth Edwards went through the Oprah ordeal of baring...

Last October, Michael Bloomberg, New York City's Mayor, announced that he would seek to extend the city's term limits law and run for a third term in 2009, since he needed more than that silly old law limiting the Mayor to two terms, especially during the Wall Street financial crises....

I was one of the lucky ones. I had a great mother. The fact that I did not fully appreciate that until after her death makes me typical -- I fear -- rather than special among sons. She easily forgave my obsession with my work, more than I now forgive...

Thursday's NY Times has a front page story about Charlene Marshall, daughter-in-law of the late Brook Astor, headlined, "Not on Trial, but Judged as a Villain." Summed up, Charlene is generally considered the Lady Macbeth behind her husband's fall from grace; standing in the shadows behind his alleged forgery of...

It is hard to believe that in 2009 there can be a controversy about a white director Bartlett Sher directing August Wilson's African American classic drama, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone." But there is such a controversy, and it even made the front page of the New York Times this...

Sorry. The question in the heading of this post isn't something I can answer. I recognize that the banking and insurance bailout which started with Bush's Paulson and goes on with Obama's Geithner has not produced the promised new jobs, or held on to old ones, or made the...

Charles Dickens first title for his wonderful novel Little Dorrit was Nobody's Fault. He chose not to use it. Catch the PBS version if you can - it's gloriously acted and produced and very relevant to our time with its world of the crazy greedy, the dispossessed and arch-typical...

We are mad as hell and Bernie Madoff has become the receptacle for our national rage. Mention his name and you are speaking about the man all America loves to hate. At present he is the dark star of cable news. Add the bonuses at AIG and other bailouts to...

I was driving back from a weekend visit to my infant twin grand-daughters yesterday when I played a CD of one of my favorite old Bessie Smith standards, "Ain't nobody's business if I do." The blues usually warms me with its sad-joyful rendering of the human condition; its appeal to...

Last Tuesday when I went to bed I was just thirty three years old. Imagine my astonishment when I woke up Wednesday morning to find myself seventy-seven. I guess we all live out an episode of The Twilight Zone as we get older, finding ourselves adrift in that strange...

I am about to relate a truly disgusting story about myself as a boy which I offer to President Obama - both as a way to deal with enemies and a morality tale. I've never told it before - except to my sons - there are limits to my...

I was on the treadmill last week -- not my usual activity -- but the pounds are adding on as the worries multiply so I headed for the ugly monster machine that is supposed to help awaken my sleeping endorphins and shrink the burgeoning waistline. For those who hate...