“I hasten to declare that I have been married to my present spouse only since 2002, though I knew I loved him the moment I saw him on 3 October 1999 and, in…

“I know I made some small talk then, but the rest is a blur: the pot-bellied stove and the shelves (and shelves and shelves) of pickles and preserves, put up by Mama Boleman…

“Reader, pause here. What followed was, and remains, an utterly unique experience in my life. This was no shop girl waving strips of scented blotting paper, hawking mass-produced aromas in a mall. This…

“Mademoiselle—I never knew her last name—was a Romanian refugee, a member of the royal family and, we were told, a princess. There were many royals in Romania until the last king, Michael, was…

“Throughout the land, Democrats and Independents alike await (like Godot) the reappearance of Special Counsel Robert Swan ‘Bob’ Mueller III, who, we pray (to no one in particular) will come forth, sooner rather…

“I have asked, I have begged, all of you to read Elizabeth Kolbert’s book so that at least we will be on the same page. We are on the same planet and if…

“How did the writers of ‘Weekly Hubris’ come together, readers often ask me? This month, I asked my Contributors to weigh in, in order of appearance in my life . . . and…

“We will rise up from this place as though we had never been here in the first place, nesting within our sturdy hearts the neighbors we have come to love, but never, I…

“My sole original thought this spring is this: what’s with the god-awful pinstripe suits now being worn by every pol, pundit, and latter-day-Pétain in Washington, DC? I long for the mavens of ‘Queer…

“There are times when words are the last things on my mind. These times are rare (and rarefied), as immersed as I have been, since the age of three, in language. But, on…