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The Illicit Smell ...

John Updike died this week.

I remember most warmly an Updike story the New Yorker published in the eighties. In it, he described a New England weekend trip. Several apparently successful couples sharing a large country house. In the morning, he captured the tenuous space between the professional and the deeply personal by describing how, in spite of every doctor's best advice (at least one of these vacationers was, I seem to remember, a doctor), the house was filled with the illicit smell of bacon. Slip over here for more ...

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Crime Scene

Five and a half years ago, when the departing administration was, it turns out, just getting started, I traveled to Washington DC to do some research in the Library of Congress. The purpose of that trip, it turns out, was not the library research, but something else. Call it a full immersion experience. I post this story here today in remembrance of those days and in deep gratitude for the days to follow. However we traveled, we ended up here! Cheers! Slip over here for more ...

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Good Citizenship

I’ve never been much of a flag-waver, but I am passionate about good citizenship. By citizenship, I do not intend to imply anything about country of origin, immigration status, or political belief. I speak instead to what any thriving society requires of its citizens, people like you and me.

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Eighty Six

Today would have been my father's 86th birthday. The first one I've ever known him to miss. But then he 86ed in September.

I've been working to clean out the old family place these last few weeks. Organizing for an uncertain future. I honor his memory today and the context he created, and the one I'll leave behind. Slip over here for more ...

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Dispatch from the front lines ...

They don't return your phone call. They don't acknowledge receiving your resume. It's as if the profession you crawled to the top of no longer exists. Imagine the legal profession suddenly evaporating, leaving exactly no demand for attorneys of any stripe and you'll come close to imagining the size of the community who surprisingly find themselves on the front lines of our first white collar recession. Slip over here for more ...
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