Miss Kitt To You

Miss Kitt To YouI couldn’t imagine why Eartha Kitt—’the most exciting woman in the world’—would want to hang out with someone as ‘unsophisticated’ as me.

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Apple’s Tim Cook Came Out and We Can Relate

Apple's Tim Cook Came Out and We Can RelateIt’s not about being gay, it’s about knowing and showing who you are.

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Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Hello Darkness, My Old FriendThis holiday season I became the confused old man behind the wheel that I used to dread encountering on the road.

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Game Of Thrones

Are you the Jon Stark?

I get asked the question a lot. It happened twice on the same day last week. It’s all because I share the same name as Jon Stark, the lead character and moral center of “Game of Thrones”.

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Train In The Distance

The year was 1959, and I was 12 years old. I knew exactly what train I wanted. As the holidays approached, I pointed it out to my parents at our local hobby shop. It was an HO-gauge replica of the Sante Fe Super Chief, which ran between Los Angeles and Chicago from 1936 to 1971. Billed as a “grand hotel on rails,” it’s considered to be the sleekest, most beautiful passenger train ever built in America.

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You Don’t Make Old Friends

When I made the decision to move from Boston to Minneapolis three years ago, my friends and neighbors wished me well. But not JoAnn: “What are you thinking?” she asked me. Old friends tend to be blunt.

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Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying

Who doesn’t love the sun? I always worshiped it in the most delicious, but unhealthy ways, especially when I was young. My altars were rooftops, beaches and convertibles. I always dreaded the end of daylight saving time, when it was shockingly dark at 5 p.m. (It takes place this year on Sunday, Nov. 3, at 2 a.m.) I didn’t like spending the next six months as the sun’s jilted lover, waiting for it to come crawling back to me from Rio, or wherever it had run off to.

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Recipes for Life

“Cookbooks. $3 each,” said the sign on the table in my driveway.
They were gone within a few hours — hundreds of cookbooks that I had spent decades collecting. I had cookbooks for every country’s city and region; for every technique, from roasting to outdoor grilling; by big- name chefs, celebrities and foodies. I had the classics, from “Julia Child” to “Joy of Cooking” to “Escoffier.” I had cookbooks whose recipes I didn’t give a fig about. Their sumptuous photographs were a meal in themselves.

But there was one cookbook that didn’t make my moving sale: Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.” Even if I had wanted to sell it, I doubt I could — its pages are frayed and covered with food stains.

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Don’t Ask What Books Are on My Coffee Table!

Every Sunday I read the “By the Book” column that appears in the New York Time’s Book Review section. The one-page Q&A asks important writers and artists about their reading habits.

I’m always astonished — and intimidated — by the titles and quantity of the books the interviewees rattle off. I just hope I never get a call from the editors of the column asking what I’m reading now.

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