The Burrow

" What did the President know, and when did he know it?" I've been trying to hold it together, immersing myself in reading aloud to kindergarten kids,  but I've had enough.   The New York Times  is not fake news. You can argue if Flynn was a rogue actor or if the President has any idea what a two-state solution actually means or if Jeff Sessions can possibly oversee an impartial inquiry but one thing I cannot countenance is calling The New York Times fake news. "Don't do anything you wouldn't want printed on the front page of The New York Times " was Daddooooo's mantra.  When  The New York Times  ran a bold headline that fact was reported by other outlets.  Having your wedding or death reported there in anything other than a paid advertisement signified something.... I'm not sure what, but it was something.  A friend counts their publication of his Letter to the Editor as a milestone achievement in an otherwise quite successful life. ...

I am going to try to reduce the deficit and fix the budget of the United States of America this weekend. When I'm done, I am going to put my money where my mouth is.  I'm going to publish my ideas where my persona is on display, here in The Burrow, and I'm going to post my solution on the New York Times Magazine's website.   I love the puzzles in the Sunday New York Times Magazine.  I always finish the crossword (or come real close) and sometimes the other puzzle on the page.  I like the thought of an anonymous competition with really smart people all over the globe.  I do them in ink, and I don't use the dictionary.  Human life-lines are acceptable (TBG feigns aggravation if too many quarters of football go by without my interrupting to wonder about the identity of the 1953 AL Cy Young winner) but for the most part it's me vs the boxes, one clue at a time.   Thanks to Ronni Bennett over at Time Goes By I came to a different kind of puzzle...

Jeff van Gundy wondered why his brother was referred to as Mr. van Gundy in the Wall Street Journal today. "Why are they so formal? And the NYTimes, too. He's not Mr. Anybody, he's just Stan!" And this is another nail in the coffin of mediated media . He's not "just Stan" for crying out loud. He's coaching (albeit not that successfully) in the premier event of his sport. He's all that's on television and if the freakin' Wall Street Journal is writing about his double knit pullovers and off the rack slacks then he certainly is Mr. Somebody. Do you detect a note of hysteria here, perhaps? As the walls of my fortress are attacked, I must strike back. I ask you: What is wrong with showing respect? I have never been able to call my parents' friends by their first names. Not after I was Sadie Sadie Married Lady nor Mother to G'ma and Daddooooo's first grandchild nor after funerals and illnesses or anything else that life might pre...

Explaining Twitter to TBG today over lunch, I began to think about popularity. He'd asked me how people knew about your tweets. "Depends on how popular you are, I guess." But then I wondered, if you tweet and no one cares are you really anyplace at all? Living in the fast lane, being off the grid, achieving your 15 minutes of fame -- these I understand. Assessing your social status based on the number of Facebook friends you've acquired is a little more difficult for me. Some of it is generational, I know. In my age cohort it is still acceptable to eschew social networking sites. I think I am friends with everyone in my address book who's also on Facebook, but that is nowhere near the totality of people with whom I am in contact. I wish they all used it (the birthday reminders are especially lovely!) but they don't and I understand why. The idea that everyone else would care that you'd finished exams or gone to the dentist or (my favorite) were bo...

I'm one of a dying breed, or so I've been told. I read newspapers. Lots and lots of newspapers. And I read them every day. I can't eat my oatmeal without the comics and Ann Landers (or whoever is writing that column now.... it'll always be Ann Landers to me). I read the local news to find out who's been robbed or crashed a car into a light pole or won a spelling bee or donated her house to the homeless coalition. High school sports are a big part of my morning, too. Softball, wrestling, track and field - I'll never go to watch them participate, but I keep up with the standings and know when CDO beats Salpointe . Memories of Sunday morning on the living room floor with Newsday 's comics still make me smile. Letters to the Editor were always good for a diversion - did I know anyone who'd been published? What was for sale in the want ads? Then, on to the Sam Goody ad in The New York Times ; plotting where to invest my allowance based on whose albums were o...