Dear Ted Cruz, I feel terrible. You set the bar for being a good Dad. I failed miserably. Like you, I feel the pain of knowing that my daughter was suffering in a cold house in Texas. …

The Muddle “We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school” - No Surrender, From Born to Run (1984) From the chatter about Bruce Springsteen’s Super Bowl non — advertisement for Jeep, you might think that certain segments of America cared more about that two-minute…

This spiral notebook is older than the internet. It was only two years old when a fire erupted in the house I shared with two friends on Westmoreland Avenue in Syracuse. You can see the brown marks, almost like a frame, where the smoke reached the pages. …

https://www.rootstockpublishing.com/rootstock-books/nobody-hitchhikes-anymore Before social distancing became our national religion, I had planned to spend the spring of 2020 hitchhiking backroads south toward Key West. I love to travel with strangers and write about it. That’s what this book, Nobody Hitchhikes Anymore, is all about (you can get a copy at https://www.rootstockpublishing.com/rootstock-books/nobody-hitchhikes-anymore)…

After George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, a friend asked, to no one in particular, what would happen if we each intervened when we saw a police officer violently assaulting someone on the street. Like most things in America, there are two answers to that question…

One Sunday a while back my older son and his girlfriend stopped by to say hi. They brought their dog Maddie over to play in the yard with our Gracie. Maddie used to come over a few times a week and spend the day. Our yard was the doggie day…

I get up early most days. Sundays are my favorite. Before my morning run (usually with friends, these days solo) I totter out to the curb, push open the gate, and retrieve the newspaper. It’s wrapped in a plastic bag, tucked into the plastic sleeve underneath the mailbox. I tuck…

Leadership matters. It matters a lot. In times such as these, like it or not, the people we place in positions of power suddenly have power over our lives and, it is not too dramatic to say, over our deaths. Some succeed while others fail. …

My friend Mario was born on October 15, 1928, six days after Babe Ruth hit three home runs in Game Four of the World Series to beat the St. Louis Cardinals and give the Yankees their third World Championship. …