Dear McNamara Children, This is a belated apology. I have been meaning to set things straight, but the right moment never materialized, and now it has been over 50 years. However, my guilt came flooding back as I watched the recent Ken Burn documentary on the Vietnam War. Night after night I saw your father,…
Read MoreWho wants to hear the word death out loud? For advertisers, the answer is nobody, and they work hard to avoid this basic fact of life. Pharmaceutical ads are required to list potential complications. So the taboo word must be spoken, but few can appreciate the word death midst dreamy images of puppies and walks…
Read MoreWhen I picked up my deck stain at the Sherwin Williams store, I realized I’d stumbled onto the perfect scenario for a Seinfeld episode. I couldn’t believe that the beleaguered Seinfeld writers, who appeared to run out of ideas by the 9th season, missed this one. I had just listened to a history of the…
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My first brush with greatness came in the mid-1960s on a Utah ski vacation that overlapped with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his family. As a preteen, I was only vaguely aware of the man. My parents, who still had complete confidence in the government, never talked politics and rarely watched the evening news,…
Read MoreGoing to the grocery store can be a dreary chore, so I reframe the trip as a contest of wills between me, the wily consumer, and marketers, eager to suck me in with their coveted eye-level shelf-space, flashy packaging and dubious health claims. I have seen marketing terms come and go. Natural, light, organic, craft,…
Read MoreLast month Nick and I spent 36 hours in the clutches of the Marquette General Hospital in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan, investigating his fleeting episode of chest pain, which turned out to be nothing more than a flush of heartburn. As we left, the nurse practitioner handed Nick a copy of his medical records to…
Read MoreThe airport experience is nothing but sequential moments of forced idleness. As we stand numbly in security lines or fidget at the gate, our weary eyes dart around looking for stimulation. Marketers have obliged. Every available surface is slathered with ads – the pillars of the concourse, the elevator door, the escalator rails or the…
Read MoreMy family rarely stayed in hotel rooms when we were kids, so when I first saw a Gideon Bible I thought that it had been left by a previous occupant named Gideon. I thought nothing more of it until 1968 when I heard the Beatles sing Rocky Racoon: Rocky Racoon checked into his room Only to…
Read MoreDriving makes me drowsy, so I am anxious as I contemplate my solo drive from my writer’s retreat in Montpelier, Vermont to my home north of Chicago. On most long drives, I wisely stop for refreshing naps. Once a wavering median line prompted me to pull over in Milwaukee just one hour north of my…
Read MoreI sat in the windowless bowels of O’Hare Airport waiting for my face-to-face Global Entry interview. Nick had urged me to sign up not because I deserved recognition as a trusted traveler, but solely to bypass TSA and immigration lines. I have objected to such elitist programs on principle – line-cutting in the grade…
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