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Google Bard has had a fuzzy sense of my Washington Post career
Rejection hurts, but does it hurt more or less when a faceless conversational artificial-intelligence chatbot has done the rejection? And when the rejection comes in the form of erasing a large chunk...
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Reflections on Georgetown reunions
This weekend features my 30th college reunion. Thirty years is a long time since I collected the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service diploma framed on the wall above this computer–a long...
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The D.C. seafood establishment that’s only open one night a year
Dinner Wednesday night was an exceptional treat: an all-you-can-eat selection of small plates of seafood, with beer and wine included, in the unlikely venue of the Department of Commerce’s...
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An overdue visit to a corner of my family history
Looking out the window at the beautiful scenery below of Croatia’s Adriatic coast before landing at Split Saturday afternoon, I had to wonder: What had led one set of great-grandparents to decide...
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One bike, 25 years
Just over a quarter-century ago, I spent the best $400 and change I’ve ever invested on transportation. And I’m still not done capitalizing on that purchase–reduced by another $100 two weeks later...
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I still like living in a place with distinct seasons
This week has featured two moderate snowstorms that required dusting off the snow shovel we could ignore last winter because we now had to clear the sidewalk, plus multiple sub-freezing days that...
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Darkness at 1:41 p.m.
DALLAS I thought I’d seen enough pictures of a total solar eclipse to guess what it might feel like to see one with my own eyes. But then I got out of bed at 5:30 a.m. Monday to fly to DFW and witness...
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Twenty years is a long time in one house
Wednesday marked a personal milestone that I had to research before gracing it with a calendar entry: Twenty years earlier, my wife and I moved into the house that we still occupy today. Signing the...
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Four years ago
Nobody should look back on 2020 with anything but a mix of relief that it’s over and dread about what we watched. And yet Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump keeps asking voters if they’re...
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The worst
I have now voted in nine presidential elections, four of which didn’t go the way I wanted. None left me feeling as bleak as Donald Trump’s win Tuesday, a horror-movie sequel that I did not request and...
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