Upcoming Events:
Monday, 9 June, 10:30 am
Book Talk, An Apartment in Paris, Fitchburg Community Center, 5510 Lacy Road, Fitchburg, Wis.
Saturday, 14 June, 1-3 pm
Meet & Greet, Barnes & Noble, West Towne, Madison
Thursday, 19 June, 10 am
Book Talk, An Apartment in Paris, Middleton Community Center, 7448 Hubbard Ave. Middleton Wis.
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The Weekly Screed
by David Benjamin “I am lucky enough in my life to come across some of the most talented athletes in soccer. And President Trump is made of the same sort of fibre.” —Gianni Infantino, FIFA president PARIS—Largely because I depend on its frequent flyer program for early boarding and free luggage, I’ve been “loyal” to…
Read More...by David Benjamin “I love coffee, I love tea/ I love the java jive and it loves me/ Coffee and tea and the java and me/ A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, boy … ” —Milton Drake & Ben Oakland MADISON, Wis.—“No coffee?” I cried. “What the hell do you mean,…
Read More...by David Benjamin “We cannot get away from the fact that a child is hard-wired to bond with mom. They know her smell, they know her heartbeat, they know her voice. I just think, why should we deny that?” —Jenet Erickson, Institute for Family Studies MADISON, Wis.—I wasn’t interested in my mother. She pretty much…
Read More...MADISON, Wis.—My worst bicycle crash happened when I was in sixth grade, coming down the hill from St. Mary’s School. The hill, pretty much the only one in town, was steep, wide and paved for speed. I wasn’t astride my bike, just perched on the left-side pedal, coasting toward Ninneman’s Funeral Home. My path was…
Read More...by David Benjamin THE VATICAN, 29 April—The first day of the conclave of cardinals to choose a successor to Pope Francis has ended in traditional disarray. Afterward, two furtive figures, recognizable as a Monsignor O’Malley and Cardinal Bellini, an American prelate who bears an eerie resemblance to Stanley Tucci, enter the Chapel men’s room. Msgr.…
Read More...by David Benjamin “Growing up is a ritual, more deadly than religion, more complicated than baseball, for there seem to be no rules. Everything is experienced for the first time.” ― W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe MADISON, Wis.—In the Wisconsin town where I lived ’til I was thirteen, there were two “official” baseball fields, complete with…
Read More...by David Benjamin “[Peter] Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks.” — Elon Musk MADISON, Wis.—My friend Smedley has survived for decades as a Washington D.C. “insider.” The secret of his success is a chameleonlike knack for adjusting to the ebb and flow of the ideological tides in American politics. He keenly predicted, during…
Read More...by David Benjamin “You gotta do the Black Botton/ Gotta do the Shag/ And the Charleston/ And the Varsity Drag/ Oh, how I love the ladies/ Wear collegiate, collegiate clothes/ We’re so collegiate/ Rather be a ladies/ Rather be a ladies man…” —Good News MADISON, Wis.—When I was sixteen, I added about two pounds to…
Read More...by David Benjamin “By word and deed, Trump treats Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as his only real peers. Our allies, by contrast, are our subordinates. It’s as if Putin, Xi and Trump were feudal lords and each were entitled to his own feudal domain.” —David French, NY Times, 23 March MADISON, Wis.—Writing in 1948,…
Read More...by David Benjamin “I learned how to read the distance of a flyball from the crack of the bat over the radio and the tone of Earl Gillespie’s response (he never, ever hyped a warning-track quail as a dinger).” —David Benjamin, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked MADISON, Wis.—It wasn’t an every…
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