A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

1. Who were your best friends, or were you a friendless geek? What was the most interesting fun that you had together?   My best friends at that age were Richard de la Pena* and Betsy Matteis, with whom I had gone to school in elementary, junior high, high school, and on to community college. Richard and I still hang out every so often; he visits when he has a day off and we watch movies on the DVD player and talk about the "old days" of the early 1980s and women.  Betsy used to hang out with us until a few years ago, when she dropped out of sight. I am still very fond of her, not only because she's very smart and was instrumental in my early success in college, but because she has the distinction of being the first woman to French kiss me.  As for the "most interesting fun" part of the question, I don't recall anything particularly memorable, except maybe Betsy's 18th birthday party, which was when we played "Spin the Bottle" and I got t...

The Lady Loses The best story about Coolidge's taciturnity, told by his wife, concerns the society woman who said, as she sat down next to him at a dinner party, "You must talk to me, Mr. Coolidge. I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you." "You lose," said Coolidge. How to Charge Once when Lincoln was in the War Department an officer who was in a big hurry slam-banged into him, then offered "ten thousand pardons" when he saw who it was. "One is enough," smiled Lincoln. "I wish the whole army would charge like that." -- From Presidential Anecdotes, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. One of the most curious -- and vexing -- flaws in the U.S. public education system is the way that American history, especially its political history, is taught in all the 50 states. Having attended public schools in the 1970s and 1980s, I still have vivid memories of (a) textbooks with tons of illustrations but dry, boring...

Love Unspoken, Love Unbroken Dedicated to everyone I've loved, past...and present No Absolution: February 1998 It’s quiet here. But then again, it’s supposed to be quiet. Cemeteries, even those in the heart of a city, tend to be full of silence. The sounds of the neighborhood – barking dogs, laughing children, even the traffic on the adjacent streets – are swallowed up by the silence of the graveyard. The walls around the perimeter of the cemetery – imposing redbrick walls six feet high and adorned with a black iron fence – have something to do with it, I suppose. I’m a historian, not an acoustical engineer. I’ve been here some fifteen minutes, but it seems as if I have been here for hours. It has been twenty minutes since I drove into the parking lot, walked into the main office, and asked one of the dark-suited employees where Marty’s grave is. The employee – or Service Representative, as her desktop nameplate so eloquently states her job title – quietly tapped a few...