News & Other Writings
Al Gore, Michael, Keaton, and a Time Machine, Necessary Fiction
February 23, 2024
It’s shocking how long ago I began writing my novel Waiting for Al Gore. I am not patient, persistent, persevering, or any of those commendable qualities ascribed to authors who doggedly toil away, draft after plodding draft, year after year.
Instead, I am antsy, opportunistic, partial to shortcuts, ever angling for a favorable tailwind.
May Every Unpublished Novel Finally Find A Reader, The Boston Globe
November 7, 2023
The manuscript has been stashed on the closet’s upper shelf for several decades. Finally pulling it down, I feel like weeping. My late grandfather painstakingly wrote this unpublished novel, and I should have read it sooner. Isn’t that what karma’s about? Do unto others?
The Flag, The Cross, and the Station Wagon – Book Review, ArtsFuse
August 7, 2022
It would be a mistake to review Bill McKibben’s latest work, The Flag, The Cross, and the Station Wagon, as if it were but another entry in the high-stakes publishing sweepstakes to capture the zeitgeist and bring home the gold. His sights are set higher than that.
Sports Hero For The Biden Era (Hint: Not Who You Think), Inside Sources
February 22, 2021
Not all sports questions are trivia questions. Try this one: Is a level playing field just another breakable norm?
The relentless campaign by ex-President Trump to undermine poll workers, ballot counters, election officials, and even the final vote tally itself offers up an analogy no true sports fan can ignore. Trump and his Republican teammates were not simply working the refs. Their goal was to have the referees replaced by hand-picked flunkies firmly in their back pocket.
Stamp of Approval, Medium
June 16, 2020
My father was proud, supremely self-confident, and certain of his abilities, of which there were many. He was tall, personable and athletic, his physical prowess damaged only slightly by the severe injuries he’d suffered when the Naval Destroyer on which he’d served during World War II was torpedoed in the Mindanao Sea.
The Monster Lie That Paved Trump’s Way, AlterNet
April 29, 2020
The lies spewing from President Trump clearly cannot be stopped. But they can be defanged, and the place to start is with the one monster lie that paved the way for all that followed.
Bob Dylan, the JFK Assassination, and My Frantic Quest to Connect the Two, Medium
April 11, 2020
With the stunning recent midnight release of Murder Most Foul, Bob Dylan declared his deep distress at the unsolved mysteries surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. I wish I’d known about that sooner. It would have saved me a lot of anguish and embarrassment.
Basketball Referees Are Easy Scapegoats For The NCAA, Los Angeles Times
March 22, 2019
As March Madness begins in earnest, so too will debates and controversies over calls made by the stressed-out referees who officiate the NCAA tournament.
Some Thoughts on the Martin Luther King Assassination and the Mueller Probe, Consortium News
March 29, 2018
What is our official conclusion about the Martin Luther King assassination? Or rather, after all this time, is there an “official” conclusion? The answer to that goes beyond mere historical curiosity. For the murky ambiguities that define this case, coupled with an evident fondness among Americans for simplified, easy-reader versions of wrenching events, could well foreshadow the ultimate outcome of another critical probe 50 years later – Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between Donald Trump and the Russian government to sway the outcome of Election 2016.
Why Fans Should See Like Refs, The Boston Globe
March 7, 2016
Sports are phenomenally popular as teaching tools for values that go beyond sports. Life lessons from baseball, football, and basketball concerning the tenacity, discipline, and perseverance needed to improve, prosper, and thrive are a recurring refrain, urging us onward. We who will never face crunch time in the Super Bowl can seemingly profit from Peyton Manning’s tips for performance under pressure.
Do Sports Have Too Many Rules? Chicago Tribune
January 23, 2015
Who knew that National Football League referees, in addition to their vast duties policing a chaotic game chock full of borderline violence, must also make sure nobody messes with the inflation level of the balls?
JFK Case: A Conspiracy Activist Looks Back, Chicago Tribune
November 21, 2013
From 1974, when I first gave a public lecture on the subject, illustrated with a purloined 8 mm copy of the Zapruder film, until 1979, when the official investigation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded with its stunning finding that there may have been “at least two gunmen,” I was deeply involved in efforts to “solve” the John F. Kennedy assassination.
“The handsome, laconic stranger with the mysterious past alights from the train in a small town, and… It sounds like the start of a western in stagecoach times, but it’s really a mid-western in a global economy. Third and Long is an engagingly sweet tale of first impressions, second chances.”
—Frank Deford, novelist, sportswriter, commentator
