This piece was written before the pandemic started and copy-edited and completed this fall and winter. Many thanks to Polly Saltonstall and her staff at…
“Effective at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 17, 2020 any individual who is over age two and able to medically tolerate a face-covering shall be…
In New York City, the constant sound of sirens is something you build immunity to, just like the smell and the congestion. We live here…
I sat on my couch Sunday morning, knowing I had something better to do. It wasn’t much, just writing letters to infrequent voters, something I…
On the beach in front of my mother-in-law’s house in Rincon, Puerto Rico, are three almond trees. When we arrived to visit in February, months…
My wife and I have been traveling to the Northwest corner of Puerto Rico for more than twenty years. First as part of our courtship…
Writing is an act of imposture. You are either pretending to be someone else (when you write fiction) or writing in a voice that is…
President Obama recently called on the Muslim Community “to think about how we make sure that children are not being infected with this notion that…
Americans get the inventions we deserve. The ironically named smartphone is a perfect example. And let me say at the outset that I am American…
It’s early summer and ordinarily about now, my elder daughter would be preparing for camp. But not this year. Instead, she’s starting an internship, learning…
The other day I went and got a service. An item I own had malfunctioned, at least according to a light on its dashboard. I…
I know how Amare feels. The Heat, for all their talent, are a bunch of jerks. Lebron is a whiner and a flopper and a…
One of our doormen died suddenly last year around Christmas. A few years older than me, a heavy smoker, Raoul had been a DJ in…
The great thing about the Jeremy Lin story is that it’s not manufactured. It’s real.  And as a result no one quite knows what to…
In the window of Citarella on the Upper West Side, a flag had been created out of shrimp and other fish. Above it, was the…
As the president battled with a recalcitrant Congress, and the Republicans, claiming to represent a conservative constituency, had us hurtling further toward financial oblivion, the…
I don’t often get up to Harlem. Recently I was sent up for an assignment to write about some graduate students who are volunteering to…
Sometimes New York surprises. Just when you think it’s going to behave according to form — turn out to be exactly the way outsiders see…
I’m a regular at a coffee establishment in my neighborhood; I consider the table facing the doorway my office away from my office. The manager…
Why Rag and Bone was praising CafĂ© Colonial: they were preparing to take over their old space. It’s not their fault. But this is the…
It’s hot. People are dealing with this with various levels of success. Some spend their day running from air conditioning to air conditioning. Developing a…
Lebron is coming. Someone showed him an apartment in the Time Warner Center. Someone else showed him a townhouse in the Village. Our sportswriters are…
In September 1997, my essay on being a freelancer and a Dad appeared in Family Fun. Please see Man of the house.
Hacker basketball players are not used to flashes of greatness. In April 1997, my essay on an unusual night in the career of a certain…
For a transplant, there was something both comforting and embarrassing about the appearance on Broadway of a satellite of the famous Boston mainstay Filene’s. In…