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A personal paradise lost
July 21, 2025 This is a hugely depressing story for me, partly because it’s about yet another MAGA type getting his way. This guy bullied the government of Walton County, Florida into letting him drape Trump banners all over his house in spite of a sign ordinance. However, it’s also a bummer because of the… Read more
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On writing: Great expectations, or the worst of times?
July 10, 2025 You’ve got a winner. The idea for the story came so naturally that you just knew it was special. You visualize the whole thing before sitting down to write, as if all nine muses joined forces to plant it in your head. The words fly onto the screen and you love how… Read more
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The day I made the front page
June 25, 2025 Just rediscovered this in a box in the basement. In 2001, as the Senate correspondent for the Voice of America, I covered an informal press conference by the late Senator John McCain. That’s me sitting in the lower left. I believe the woman next to me is the Post’s Helen Dewar, one… Read more
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New short story: “Wildwood Nights: The Prologue”
June 23, 2025 Art mirrors life—or is it the reverse? For Brian and Kate, reality and fiction spin a complicated web in my new story, “Wildwood Nights: The Prologue.” Just after Kate’s infidelity nearly wrecks their marriage, her illness forces them into an uneasy truce at their beach house on the Gulf of Mexico. Amid… Read more
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The show must go on. Or go broke.
June 9, 2025 PBS recently served up a treat for musical theatre fans: the recent London revival of the classic “Kiss Me, Kate.” It was extra special for me because I appeared in that show myself when I was just out of high school, in a production of the Kalamazoo (Michigan) Community Youth Theatre. If… Read more
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Uncivil service
May 12, 2025 How would you feel about the VA treating your cancer with a horse drug? Or the IRS demanding you pay your taxes in Trump meme coin? Or maybe you’ll visit a national park and find the rangers selling off the land to developers, while back at home the post office is refusing… Read more
Stories from the South and the subconscious