Category: Popular Culture

  • (The following post originally ran Nov. 21, 2007, and has become a Below the Fold holiday tradition of sorts. For those who have read it before, please pardon the repetition — and for those who are reading it for the first time, I hope it serves as a reminder of what this holiday, and being…

  • “If we don’t meet again, your final assignment from me is perhaps the most important lesson you will learn in life. Go to your mother, father, brother and sisters, and tell them with all your heart how much you love them. And tell them you know how much they love you too. Go out of…

  • EVERY FATHER’S DAY I use this space to remember those who don’t or perhaps never had fathers. Usually I just repost this story, originally published in 1990 when I was a newspaper columnist. Today, however, I decided to reach all the way back to 2010 and share a post I wrote titled “Social Media, Milkshakes…

  • I’M SOMETIMES ASKED WHY, back in the early ‘90s, I wrote a book on the death penalty. There were the obvious reasons, from my work as a reporter covering capital murder cases to the resurgence of executions in the United States. But the real reason I wrote the book had nothing to do with anything…

  • (The following post originally ran Nov. 21, 2007, and has become a Below the Fold holiday tradition of sorts. For those who have read it before, please pardon the repetition — and for those who are reading it for the first time, I hope it serves as a reminder of what this holiday, and being…

  • When my sister was young – a long, long, long time ago – a teacher told her that by time she was old enough to drive, everyone would have a flying car. She did get a Ford Cobra II, but every time she tried to fly, the California Highway Patrol brought her back to Earth.…

  • There is a man – I don’t know his name – that comes to our local Starbucks every morning, pushing his walker with the tennis ball feet and flashing a gorgeous toothless smile. He orders coffee. He finds a table and settles gingerly into his seat. And then he pulls out a newspaper and starts…

  • In two or three years, my brother-in-law will either be bankrupt or a millionaire. He will either profit from a complex set a business deals or go down in flames; nearly a decade of work and planning will be left to smolder on the pyre of What Might Have Been. No middle ground. No contingencies.…