Talking to cats
When one’s spouse is bicoastal and one is home alone a lot, one talks to one’s cats. Sometimes I simply meow back when…
Read MoreAuthor: Clay
On this date—1969
Fifty years ago today, Frank Sinatra stepped into Studio 1 at Western Recorders in Hollywood. The building isn’t called that anymore—it’s still a…
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The dream about the apple pancake
I awoke this morning from a dream in which I was having a meal in the Walnut Room at Marshall Field’s State Street…
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Rodgers & Hart & Sinatra
In recent years, friends have tagged me on Facebook asking for lists of favorite records and favorite books. I sighed a little when…
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Yes, I vacationed in Paris
Already the snideness has begun. “We get it. You vacationed in Paris.” “Suddenly everybody is French.” Some among us have taken to social media…
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My dinosaur
Earlier today, I found myself prostrate with guilt when I realized that, as a child, I had chosen a favorite dinosaur not because…
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Mama the Cook
Mama was not a very good cook. She was an inspirational schoolteacher, the kind to whom people sent tear-wrinkled letters of gratitude, years after they left her classroom. She pulled…
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Geographic voices
I would be hard pressed to say which narrator of National Geographic television specials was the best. It is therefore fortunate that no…
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My trip to Sydney
The folks at the International Quality & Productivity Center had a hard time in 2007 finding someone to deliver the International Keynote Address…
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My dampness
I was born and spent my early years in Houston, and I lived there again in several stretches as an adult, so I…
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