Some people, I know, are untouched by the magic of November’s chilly passage. They sense only the certainty of yet another year’s decline. Looking out the window as I write this on a day that, though crisp, is wonderfully bright, I remember only the best, and expect more of the same.
I cannot help wondering how it is possible to recover from so shattering an event as Superstorm Sandy. Some do. Many do, in fact — and will in spite of the present ruin. But where do they find the courage?
The recent news that a car bomb had left a large area of Beirut in ruins and killed at least eight people seems almost to summarize the regrettable fate of the Lebanese — a hospitable and non-militant folk, endlessly doomed to be collateral damage in other people’s wars.
Islamic zealots are on perpetual alert for any act or expression they perceive as disrespectful of their prophet or their faith.
Lives are shaped in great part by luck. More than anything, I believe, they are influenced by the people one encounters at critical points in the journey.
I’m troubled to read of the economic pain in Spain today and the distress afflicting a people I remember as proud, generous and deserving of so much better.
Our world seems devoted, in this moment, to the task of healing. It’s not the greater world I speak of. No, I mean only this small fraction of it that we occupy — a region that endured what seemed an endless spell of rainless weeks and brutal heat. It’s here that an impulse of recovery can be sensed. The evidence of it abounds, in small ways as well as large.
Hafez Assad, the previous president of Syria, was a tyrant. His son and successor, Bashar, is infinitely worse — the author of crimes against humanity whose savagery and scale almost defy belief.
As darkness came on, the heavy bank of storm clouds lifted just enough that framed between their underside and the lake’s forested far shore was the hot orange globe of the setting sun.
Always before we’ve come to the northern country purely for pleasure. But this time we came as refugees, fleeing the desiccated, dispirited region we call home.
It occurred to me recently that “curmudgeonship” — if there is such a word — may be a predictable affliction of aging journalists, for I find myself exhibiting some of the symptoms.
Actors and singers hear the applause of the audience. Athletes hear the roar from the stadium crowd. What the writer has for applause is only what the postman brings in his pouch. Answering those letters isn’t a chore. It is the nearest thing imaginable to a conversation.
Not every woeful collection of humanity calling itself a republic can provide any dependable protection for its citizens. And not all actions undertaken in the name of religion are acceptable by even the most minimal standards of human decency. Both of those conclusions are forcefully underscored by a recent execution in Mali.
Lisa Gherardini has been gone 470 years. But if indeed she was Leonardo da Vinci’s model, she will live forever, her beauty untouched by years, on the wall of the Louvre.
During my half-century association with The Star, this newspaper has produced a distinguished list of alumni. One of them, James B. Steele, will be at the Kansas City Public Library’s Central Library on Wednesday night to speak about his latest book, “The Betrayal of the American Dream.”
I have never considered even for a minute giving up the longtime habit of rhapsodizing, whenever possible, about my furred companions. And there have been a considerable number — not only of animals but also of columns. This one is in memory of a wonderful black cat very recently deceased.
Had we acted on that old longing and actually relocated to Colorado, it’s quite possible that our dream, like the properties of those unlucky victims, would have gone up in smoke.
City folk are much disheartened by lawns burned brown, by withered flower beds, by the cost of watering and running air conditioners to make 100-plus-degree days bearable. But for rural folk, the issue isn’t comfort or aesthetics. What’s at stake are their livelihoods.
Sometimes, for a writer, the best plan is simply to step aside and let the story tell itself. That’s what I’ll try to do with this report of a magical little episode I can’t begin to explain, but which was told as true by the people who witnessed it.
Our urban geese have flown north to Canada, and I miss them greatly.
I can’t know what regrets Cyrus, the Brittany, might have about the days afield he’s missed. But when he sits beside me, leaning hard against my leg, my hand on his soft brown head, I’m sure that he knows he’s valued and believes his life is full.
Two friends and I — one of them accompanied by his young sons — had gone for an overnight at my Ozark cabin. The plan was for some fishing in the farm lake. The boys were 7 and 13 years old. They’d fished a bit before, but never with any great success. This time, I promised, would be different.
A recent news account of a British stuntman who jumped from a helicopter at an altitude of 2,400 feet, clad in a wingsuit, brings to mind a long-ago experiment in flight in a wooden vegetable crate with wings and a tail fashioned out of cardboard.
The better description of that chaotic and incompetently governed nation is as a haven for Islamist radicals and a deliberate obstructer of the attempt to establish a safe and civil society in neighboring Afghanistan.
We are without any mechanical means of waking. What we have, instead, are the dogs — Cyrus, the Brittany, and Buddy, the beagle.
