10/20/16 Bob’s Not Here

“I’d like to speak to Bob, please,” said the Nobel Committee Chairman in his best Norwegian accented English to the person who answered the phone at Ram’s Horn Publishing, the only number of any outfit that had anything to do with Bob that his underlings could find. “Bob’s not here,” answered the person at the…

8/15/14 Short Wakes

Ones reputation is like a shadow. It is gigantic when it precedes you, and a pigmy in proportion when it follows…Charles Maurice de Talleyrand I quote Talleyrand often. He was a cold-hearted, fish-blooded, disloyal, yet indispensable French Foreign Minister who single-handedly invented modern diplomacy in the service of French monarchs, emperors, and republics. None of…