The performing arts have always been a source of great pleasure for me.  As a child, growing up as I did in a suburb of New York City, I was exposed early and often to the wonders of orchestral performances, dramatic and musical stage productions, ballet, opera, and jazz, pop and rock.  It was all […]

I had only a vague sense of where American Samoa was when my son first suggested that we might spend some of our vacation time there this winter.  And, having now returned from our trip, I do have a better understanding of its geography and, perhaps of a few other things about the island that […]

We found ourselves stuck in our hotel for a couple of days on a recent vacation and took advantage of the “down” time from hiking and otherwise being out and about by watching a half dozen DVDs of films we had missed when they were in theaters. Each, to a greater or lesser extent, was […]

Aaron Sorkin is nothing if not a great writer of television series.  At least that was the reputation he earned from his writing for the wildly successful “West Wing,” for which he was the principal writer for the show’s first four years (2000-2004).  But he may have outdone his reputation with the three-year run of […]