Consider this, with apologies to Jonathan Swift, a modest proposal. Or call it — apologies to Charles Dickens — a tale of two cities. We begin in 2000 as Napster, a service that allowed music lovers to receive music without paying — i.e., to steal it — is meeting its Waterloo. Sued into submission by […]

A friend closed in his northern Italian apartment for almost six weeks emailed me saying that his wife says he looks like a “clochard.” That’s French for street bum. This from a man who once was a walking advertisement for fine Italian tailoring. Grooming has taken a hit as the coronavirus shuts down public life. […]

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced public schools will be closed for the rest of the academic year due to the coronavirus. More mayors and governors will likely make similar announcements, if they have not already done so. Rather than look upon this as a negative, I suspect some parents are enjoying […]

All of us have been experiencing frustrations and fears about a wide assortment of circumstances over the past several weeks. Many concerns are beyond our individual control. So, what are we to do?   With this in mind I want to share a situation that I always considered to be private. Some years ago, at the request of the former […]

President Donald Trump slammed the World Health Organization at a news briefing this past week and was immediately accused of scapegoating. Peter Baker of The New York Times tweeted that “Trump has found a new villain for the coronavirus pandemic,” and The Guardian newspaper described the president as “in an increasingly frantic effort to shift […]

As Americans across the country socially distance themselves due to COVID-19, many look to the open air and public spaces for their mental and physical wellness. It’s a blessing of allowable freedom in a time when confinement is the rule. Even before the virus cases began to soar, President Trump and Congress were ready to […]

After weeks of criticizing President Trump for not “doing enough” in the fight against the Covid-19 virus and suggesting the president take actions he had already taken, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden picked up the phone and called the White House. Given his confusion about so many things, perhaps he thought he was ordering […]

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams warned that this week of mounting death from the novel coronavirus could be “our Pearl Harbor moment.” He was referring, of course, to the surprise 1941 Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy base in Honolulu, which pulled the nation into World War II. Pearl Harbor would be a reasonable description […]

A country learns about itself in a crisis, and one revelation in the coronavirus emergency is that we can’t make our own penicillin. The first patient successfully treated with the antibiotic was a woman suffering from sepsis in a Connecticut hospital in 1942. Her treatment took up half the country’s supply. Yet in short order […]