People

That’s me in Miss Opalinski’s fourth grade class. I liked stuffed animals, model airplanes, T-ball, Beverly Cleary books, and Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” I spent the bulk of my time roller skating, drawing, singing “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow,” cleaning my room, and watching “3-2-1 Contact.” T-ball notwithstanding, it occurs…

“So what have you been up to?” That’s young Ryan Vaughn, drummer to half of the bands on the Lower East Side, talking. It’s just before seven o’clock on Saturday night. The sun has cast a warm, early-spring urbanglow on Avenue C. Ryan, Tony, Chris and I are sitting at an Italian restaurant across the…

“I owe everybody a rub down,” Meg said, frowning. I guess I started the whole thing off on the wrong foor when I left a message on my father’s answering machine that jokingly said, “I hope you have a lovely day celebrating the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” Oops. The afternoon (let’s face it,…

So it’s been five years, or 1825 days, or 43,800 hours, or — in terms the average American can better understand — roughly enough time to watch 87,600 episodes of “Friends.” The War In Iraq — the one intended to depose Al Queda-supporting (oops!), weapons of mass destruction-toting (oops!) dictator Saddam Hussein — has cost…

Dear Mister Rogers, My memory isn’t the best, but one moment I’ll never forget is meeting you. It was September 4, 2001. I’d arrived on Nantucket just a few hours prior. I remember going for a run, then swimming in the bay at sunset. By the time you walked over from The Crooked House, there…

I’m in the back seat of a rental van some 23 miles west of the New Jersey state line. New York City is ahead of us, casting an orange glow on the horizon. It’s been an interesting few days, much of it was spent with eight young Iraq War veterans — emphasis on young. These…