This column first was published as the “President’s Message” in the March 2012 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. With certainty, the renown physicist Garrison Keillor noted in his radio spot The Writer’s Almanac: On this date [Feb. 23] in 1927, physicist Werner Heisenberg first described his Uncertainty Principle in a letter. In […]
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Who’d’ve-Thunks
Copyright 2012 Ben S. Pollock I knew what to expect of The Artist, a “silent” film, meaning no talking, though it did have sound effects and music (and beforehand, ironically, the loudest-volume trailers since those running with Avatar). Still, the teenage box office cashier warned My Beloved and me, while giving me $7 change for […]
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My Friend Jeff Zaslow
When you’re middle-aged, what the hell is a friend, anyway? Some of my favorite people I see for one long weekend every year, a conference. In between there will be a handful of emails and, these days, rather more frequently, single-sentence repartee on Facebook. I often have met their spouses, briefly, but damn if I […]
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No Taking Ulysses for Granted
This column first was published as the “President’s Message” in the February 2012 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Spring — OK, this is winter but I’m an optimist — is busy-time for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. • We’re halfway through gathering entries for the annual Column Contest. Have you sent […]
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Know When to Folder
This column first was published as the “President’s Message” in the January 2012 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Who among us still owns a typewriter? My Smith-Corona manual portable that saw me through high school and college is in the attic, but it works. On a desk for addressing envelopes is a […]
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Havel and Me
Copyright 2011 Ben S. Pollock I met Vaclav Havel once, while he was president of Czechoslovakia. We were in a castle. Oh, and I avoided shaking hands with him. Now, he’s dead. Not that I’d ever had a chance to renew the, uh, acquaintance. In September 1992, I was in Europe for a traveling journalism […]