Do the Yak

Or not. Yes, it's been a while and I've got lots of things to muse about, but I got nervous about how much, so I'm breaking my thoughts for the past month into tasty bite-size pieces, strewn about in no particular order but starting with the holidays... both kids got to light menorahs for the first time this year, though of course I hovered nervously next to Becky, who will probably need lifelong adult supervision with burning objects and anything sharper than a butter knife. No mishaps, though. On the extended-family front, my brother F. decided sort of at the last minute to come out for a week or so with the family. They stayed with my father and S., who had made plans months earlier to go to the Caribbean as they usually do at Christmas so as to avoid the whole holiday-cheer-and-gift-giving-hell that is Christmas for them. So F. and the gang saw them for all of two days and then stayed on in their empty house, which worked out well, since if the five of them (including t...

I shouldn't be surprised any more when newspapers cut back or even go under (this week's item: the Globe has stopped printing daily classifieds -- no big loss). But this one hit me hard because it was the high point of my life in a lot of ways -- tons of fun and I did some good work there. I feel bad for the reporters and editors who worked there and I feel even worse for the readers, even though they may not feel so bad themselves, because now their elected officials, cops, etc. can operate on complete Blagojevich-like freedom. This is because there are NO newspapers (as in zero) covering a huge swath of Connecticut. In the late 1980s I'd cover a Board of Selectman meeting in Essex, Conn., and the reporters would outnumber the three selectmen: me from the Pictorial Gazette, one from the Hartford Courant, one from the Middletown Press and one (not always) from the New Haven Register. Now the P-G is gone and thr ethree dailies are shadows of their former selves from layoffs...