Sotto Voce.

"Qui plume a, guerre a." — Voltaire

Peace on Earth

Coming home from the Eastern Shore today, we got caught in a heavy snow that shut down the Bay Bridge for a while and made for a very hairy three-hour trip home. After unloading the car, shoveling the sidewalk, and replenishing ourselves over at Nacho Mama’s, I took a look out my office window and saw this magnificent play of colors and textures in the alley behind our house. I had some Lisa Gerrard going on the stereo, and the combined effect was deeply calming and full of promise, like the proverbial rainbow after the storm.

Would that all people could have such a moment tonight.

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Too Soon to Say Goodbye

Art Buchwald, that veteran columnist, icon of writerly productivity, World War II veteran — and notorious tennis player — passed away on January 17. His columns were a regular part of my newspaper reading, and a weekly lesson in how to write. In fact, giving up the Washington Post posed only two regrets for me: losing Richard Thomson’s weekly cartoon and Art Buchwald’s column. The latter, at least, I could read online so the loss was quickly healed (in fact, that was probably the moment that tipped the balance in favor of all-online newspaper reading from then on).

Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — I can’t join the long list of columnists basking in Buchwald’s reflected glow today by recalling the time I saw him in line at the movie theater and heard him ask the fellow behind him where the men’s room was (“and that, for me, just so captures the wit and charm of the man, I still smile every time I think about it, lo these many years…”)

So rather than layering on more treacle, let’s allow him to speak for himself before making his farewells.

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