In 2006 when I had been on this planet for about a quarter-century, I sat down at that point in my life hoping to write down what life had taught me. Sometimes I would have this crisis where I thought that I did not learn anything aside from basic facts from grade school like in […]
When I was child, it was impressed upon me that television was evil. Over the course of my life I have had a complicated relationship with television. Ultimately, I have viewed it more with wariness and disdain. As a parent, I have done the most to limit the presence of television in my daughter’s life […]
I normally would not take such a risk, not thinking so much for my own well-being, but the lives of others who could be compromised, if I were to contract the virus and pass it to someone. But here I was, ready to risk it all for those I love and…myself. Both my parents turned […]
You hear the crack of the bat and see a ball sailing through the crisp spring air on Chicago’s Northside as it gets hung up in the ivy of the Wrigley outfield for a ground-rule double. With beer in hand, you think this is it.
I am excited to formally introduce the project that has been more than a decade in the making: Subterranean Mixtape. This has been a journey not only of discovery and great emotional depth but tenacity. The more than 1,000 pages of my writing that I pulled together that spans more than two decades was culled […]
Jay McInerney has had a successful writing career in both fiction and non-fiction. It is particularly fascinating how this celebrated novelist decided to turn to wine writing later in life. He has an interesting perspective on how wine has influenced his writing and the development of his fictions. He states that wine and writing have […]
Some might say that Scandinavians have the potential to be a “happy” place where people are productive even though they are not trying to get rich quick with a laid-back attitude because they are insular and homogenous. In fact, proportionately, they have been very generous about letting people in from other countries. In a statistic […]
There are many reasons for the unbridled happiness in Scandinavia that I mentioned in Part 1. It is trendy to point to hygge (Hoo-gah) as an easy answer to why Danes, for example, are all so damn happy. Although there is truth to this (from one who has experienced it first-hand, hygge is great and […]
I have traveled around the globe and seen many countries, experienced different cultures, and I’ve had the good fortune to meet many interesting people. But I will always be from the United States, where I was born and have lived for most of my life. My chosen profession has given me the flexibility to make […]
