"be glad for your jobs, your homes, your troubles..."

What we are now learning about the devastation in the Gulf combines with a growing desire, borne of my working life, to become a manager, a good one.

I have been watching CNN. The Houston Astrodome now has its own ZIP code and the people who run it have cleared the Astrodome schedule through December. What is the proper function of a government? …

I have the freedom to yammer on about literature. I'm not in Iraq. Hajji Qais had been on Al Mutanabbi street for 10 years and the vendors all knew him. He sold greeting cards for …

The BART conductor told people getting off at Montgomery Station at 8:30am: "See you again in eight and a half hours."

MC Masala this week talks about classic stories. Kristen, your discussion of Anna Karenina a few months ago is one reason I wrote this. He knows that the Kauravas are aching to start a war, …

The Russian band Tarakani! has a song called "Letter to Britney" that includes the lyric "I live in Moscow." Of course, the song's title is actually "Pismo k Britni" and the lyric is actually "Ya …

People all over the country open their homes to Hurricane Katrina refugees.

I helped put together a pile of stuff to give away, and a corresponding list, yesterday. 1 brown leather wallet 1 costume 14th Century merchant's pantaloons + codpiece 1 empty tea tin, suitable for storing …

Dar Williams and Guster make my column-writing nights so much easier.