In November, I had a stroke. My second one in six years.

Both strokes were established in similar ways -- the puzzling outcome of having had mild abdominal surgery. I'm not trying to make you crazy here. It doesn't seem logical to me -- or to many doctors -- either. Although I have freakishly low blood pressure and exercise regularly and eat healthily, there's something about my body that doesn't like surgery. I have surgery and the main source of blood flow to the brain, my carotid artery, breaks apart (this maneuver is called a dissection) and a stroke spins off into my brain.  Continue reading...

Everybody knows there are rules regarding punctuation. This article isn't about them.

I'm on a lot of e-mail lists; a great many people feel I should be kept abreast of developments at their companies, career milestones of the artists they represent, legislative or electoral triumphs and outrages, and too much more. And though I find some of the news they herald noteworthy, more often than not they compensate for mundane content with an inappropriate, nay, giddy level of enthusiasm. The primary means of expressing this overwrought intensity? The exclamation point.  Continue reading...

A few months ago, I ended up in Emergency for 15 hours. (Long story; it was nothing serious.) But the debacle caused me to miss a deadline. The client was the picture of understanding but for me, a former daily newspaper editor, it was deeply embarrassing.  Continue reading...

Mark Twain, lauded by many as America's greatest humorist, has a strong online presence nearly a century after his death.

Following the Equator

Mark Twain's Mississippi

The Mark Twain Project

Twain Quotes

One day while reading the newspaper I happened across a small, four-inch item about a woman who infiltrated a drug ring and helped bring down a major distributor in a small town in Michigan. She was a single mother with several children, had no background in law enforcement, and had just lost her oldest son in a car accident. The news story did not give many details about the woman or how she managed to get on the drug task force. It only said that she did so at great personal risk.  Continue reading...

Do you have a supermodel you can consult with? Headline notwithstanding, I don't mean Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell or even that inimitable diva, Tyra Banks. (I call this column the Tyra Banks approach because I'm Canadian and irony is in my nature.)  Continue reading...