In a normal time, when summer arrives vacation plans roll in. But since this is not a normal time our plan this summer is to go nowhere. While I’m doing that, at least I can take a drive down...

I am a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I first joined after the summer of 1964. Or I should say because of the summer of 1964. I was 22. In September I would start a jam-...

Says You!, the weekly comedy quiz show on National Public Radio, entered its 25th year on the air this spring. Since its debut, my wife, Paula Lyons, and I have been regular panelists. After moving...

Today’s sermon: There is no such thing as normal, except maybe a standard for body temperature. I have a pretty good memory but you know what I don’t remember? I don’t remember my...

Keep washing until hope shines through I feel I’m living through the pages cut From the first printing of the Book of Job (The God-approved edition) It was some segment about the threat...

After reading Robert B. Parker’s novel Looking for Rachel Wallace, published in 1980, I fell hard for Boston’s own man about letters and creator of the one-named detective Spenser....

Politicians of the Reagan era scuttled a time-honored tradition. They gutted the media doctrines of fairness, equal time and anti-monopoly practices. They said they were spreading democracy. Actually...

So symptomatic of his life, it seems there’s not been much notice this year of the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of America’s greatest authors, Herman Melville. There has already...

When fall comes down off the shelf The sighing souls of leaves Once green with milk Of early summer mornings Slip into coats of many colors Then give up the ghost, go off Where there was...

Twenty-six years ago, computer entrepreneur Mitch Kapor and I worked on a PBS pilot together. He was the brains behind the camera and the host in front of it. I was the producer. It was about the...