ArcaMax

When I was much younger than I am right now, I got a new job.

I'd been out of work for a while before I got the job, but I had some freelance work and some money in the bank, and I lived cheap.

A small number of people worked there, and it was at least a little cozy, and I was new in town.

And I wasn't there too long before it was almost ...Read more

I saw a priest in the coffee shop Wednesday morning.

He was wearing a cassock, the long black robe with buttons down the front that Catholic priests wore everywhere until Vatican II.

The cassock might mean he's what they call a "trad Catholic," which is short for "traditional Catholic" and means you act the way every Catholic did in 1964, ...Read more

A word on generations. I'm from the "his mom found his pot" generation, which, speaking in substances, comes after the "Spanish fly makes girls crazy" generation and the "cocaine isn't really addictive, like heroin is" generation.

In other words, I graduated from high school in a proudly all-white, working-class Midwestern suburb in 1975.

...Read more

When news stories about bedbugs started showing up a few years back, I wrote that bedbugs were out of my father's world, the 1920s world of immigrant tenement dwellers.

My father told hilariously about his mother's battles with bedbugs.

"After she boiled all the sheets, she'd paint the bed slats with kerosene, and she'd put all four legs of ...Read more

I knew a guy once, clerical type guy, had a stroke, couldn't work anymore. He was a few years shy of retirement age, so he needed to get himself on disability and the health insurance the state provides for people in his situation.

He lived alone, had worked since he was old enough to work and was able to walk unsteadily and live alone after ...Read more

I have never owned an autographed baseball or a basketball jersey with some guy's name on the back. I have hundreds of books, but none of them are signed.

I'm not a fanboy. I like boxing, but when I met Muhammad Ali in a hotel lobby, I didn't ask for his autograph.

For about 50 years, I've loved the writing of Jack Kerouac.

Who is Jack ...Read more

"Last words" used to be a popular concept. The idea was that, at the moment of your death, you were supposed to say something meaningful. They said the last words of Napoleon were, "France. The army. Head of the army. Josephine."

Josephine was Napoleon's first wife, so his last words show him either digging down to what he really loved or ...Read more

Two days ago, I went out to get trash bags because I needed trash bags, a prescription because I needed a prescription and cookies because I like cookies.

The kind young woman behind the drugstore counter handed me my prescription in a little white bag, stapled shut.

"Do you want a receipt?" she asked.

I go to one of those drugstores where ...Read more

An attorney I used to know told me how he figured out when to go home.

"When I can't pronounce 'judiciary,' I should pay my tab and leave," he said at the 8 p.m. end of his "after-work drink."

"Habeas corpus?" I said to him.

He laughed.

"You can say habeas corpus when you're too drunk to walk," he said.

What you can say when you're drunk ...Read more

I own a yarmulke. It's embroidered in gold, and I bought it in the gift shop at Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest Jewish temple in America.

I've had it for decades. I've worn it to a couple Jewish weddings, and as a reporter, I wore it when I had to cover a Jewish religious ceremony.

You go in the temple to attend or cover...Read more

Eternal vigilance is the price of paranoia, and that's why I check my garage carefully every day.

I check the garage because I figure if we get mice, that's where they're gonna get in first.

We had mice in our last house. We had them for about two weeks, and then the exterminator we hired killed them all, and we had a couple of small cracks ...Read more

I went out to buy envelopes Tuesday.

When you're semiretired, as I am, those small tasks become the day.

"Well," you say to your wife when you wake up, "I gotta go buy some envelopes today."

I walked to a chain drug store. They had envelopes. You got a box of 100 for $2.99.

The woman behind the cash register looked, as my father used to ...Read more

Some people (fewer every decade) put a little sticker inside the front cover of books they own. It's called a "bookplate," and it tells people you own the book. Maybe it also makes people return the book when they borrow it from you. Sometimes the bookplate says, "From the library of," and then your name. You can have them made, and they're ...Read more