I still believe in public radio's potential. Because it's the one mass medium that's still crafted almost entirely by true believers.

I have a similar affection for the parenthesis (but I always take most of my parentheses out, so as not to call undue attention to the glaring fact that I cannot think in complete sentences, that I think only in short fragments or long, run-on thought relays that the literati call stream of consciousness but I still like to think of as disdain for the finality of the period).

Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.

Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

Clemenza's overriding responsibility is to his family. He takes a moment out of his routine madness to remember that he had promised his wife that he would bring dessert home. His instruction to his partner in crime is an entire moral manifesto in six little words: 'Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

Robert Todd Lincoln, a.k.a. Jinxy McDeath.

My ideal picture of citizenship will always be an argument, not a sing-along.