With the final word coming down from the DNC that there are ten candidates who qualified to participate in the September 12 Democratic presidential debate, it was as if I was transported back to those childhood days watching Miss America.  As anyone who has ever watched pageants knows, the real show doesn’t start until we’re down to the semi-finalists. That’s […]

It was my first night out after having gone off to college.  It may even have been my first night on campus—I’m not sure. At the time, the legal drinking age was 18, but I could always get served having a college ID.  (I’d been using that trick in Dallas since I was 16.) So there I was at the […]

Talking about Dallas and Texas politics, the great Molly Ivins said, “The only way you can possibly react is to laugh, cry, or throw up. For me, it’s easiest to laugh.” I would argue that the same reactions are pretty much the only ones available to us when it comes to the bigger picture today.

Even to me, it seems like gay people are everywhere these days.  You can’t swing a cat (not that you should, not you should) without hitting one.  It’s not that homosexuality is occurring more frequently these days, it’s just that more and more individuals have chosen not to live in the closet, regardless of where on the spectrum they might […]

A few years back, it fell to me to arrange the seating at a donor appreciation dinner for which there would be four tables of eight.  Taking the guest list, I split the couples and assigned places, keeping an eye on having one half of each couple at the table for the guest of honor, for whom the donations had […]

Those who were expecting fireworks from the Mueller testimony at this week’s Congressional hearings got lots of fizzle and precious little sizzle.  The reluctant former special counsel stuck to his plan of staying inside the four corners of the report that bears his name. And clearly, those corners were “correct,” “I can’t speak to that,” “outside my purview” and “I […]

Where do I start?  Since our last klatch, it was my turn to catch up on, shall we say, unpleasant flying experiences.  There was the three-hour delay, which I wouldn’t have minded so much if we hadn’t been sent from terminal to terminal and gate to gate (six changes in all) while the airline tried to find a plane that […]

The other day, Karl and I were scrolling through the DVR recordings to find something we both wanted to watch. Naturally, he didn’t want to watch a Bette Davis or Elizabeth Taylor movie, and I wasn’t interested in anything he had recorded from the Military Channel. But I was a little surprised when I suggested West Side Story and he […]

It seemed like it was going to be a nice, relaxing Sunday. Karl and I had dinner with friends on Saturday night, and the contentious, vitriolic Dallas municipal election was over. Sunday was an at home time to be capped off with the Tony awards. And then it hit. Suddenly, the clouds opened delivering sheets of rain with straight-line winds […]

Sitting at my computer at this moment, my gaze wanders around the room to identify all the things that identify me as an anglophile. Queen Victoria has a mug and a bust, and there’s a smaller bust of her son, Edward VII. Behind me in the corner is a collection of figurines of Henry VIII and his six wives, plus […]