I know the answer to that one, because we all are frightened. Are you frightened of death? Lonely? Bewildered? Well then, we can spend some time together. Maybe have a couple of old Labrador retrievers in to snore and wheeze at our feet. Maybe a Portuguese Water Dog...

Dear Reader, It’s me again. Here’s a little secret that I wish you wouldn’t bruit about. I’m old. Soon enough I’m going to die. One of many things dogs do for us is that they teach us how to die. I need to know you’re out there. I write for myself, of course. I think...

A hollow book might take the pressure off of loved ones. Sometimes the people to whom we are most tightly yoked can’t tolerate our unhappiness. If we are sad, they want to fix it. "Take a hot bath with Epsom salts,” they say. Or else they say, “have a glass of gin.”...

Imagine one of those volumes you can hide a revolver in or your grandmother’s diamond earrings. Put it in the book shelf and the burglar is expected be fooled. But this book wouldn’t hold valuables or a weapon, this book would hold attention. Talk to this book and...

After my customer had signed the papers, I relaxed and spent an hour listening to the guy. He was (is) smart and well-informed. He’d worked at Orange & Rockland Utilities when I was a reporter at The Rockland Journal News. We both knew Linda Winikow. Linda was great...

Are you still there? I need you. Take the finger of your right hand and touch your sternum. Can you feel the bone? Okay, then you’re real. Do you ever imagine a fist in there, and does it sometimes grab your heart so tightly that you find it difficult to breathe? ...

But I’ve liked Stephen King on the page. And I still relish the memory of a novel by Joyce Carole\ Oates. I’m not into gratitude, but when it comes to writers, I have often been uncharacteristically thankful. I spent most of a year in high school being thankful to...

Some of my imaginary readers groused to me that the book I might write would take up space reserved on the shelf for their own intimate cri de coeur. They pictured the book I hadn’t yet written elbowing aside the volume they hadn’t yet written. I understand about...

If nobody’s going to read this, then why am I writing it? Good question? But I’m not writing something new here just jotting down what’s already been composed. I’ve been working on this book for a decade now, and I spent a lot of time in my head arguing with imaginary...

In the experiment which has been my life, I have learned that what I desperately need is a handful of decent friends. Mix the sexes and come up with eight friends and two large dogs and I’m ecstatic. I’m whistling a happy tune. And I’m not happy. And I don’t whistle....

Laura, the sweet and highly competent woman who created and has managed my website, assured me that, if I added text without setting up links, there was very little chance that anyone would stumble upon what I had written. Which seemed okay. And also, not okay at all....