Is there a God? What’s more likely, that an omnipotent being has created us in His/Her/Its image, and subtly guides the universe like a puppeteer, or that it’s all chaos, that we’re on a puny world in some jerkwater part of the universe, and when our dust mote existence terminates, it’ll happen with the same fanfare we give to a dust mote? We can’t say, though we like to think we can with something approaching certainty. The question is too big and we’re too limited. I’ve had my own brushes with the divine. My grandmother, a devout Christian, was diagnosed with inoperable cancer,... Read More

If you had told me years ago that I’d fall in love with Vienna, I would have laughed in your face. What country is it in, again? Germany? Poland? Oh, yeah, Austria. And Vienna is famous for what, exactly? You guessed it, I was a cretinous and incurious American who, for a while anyway, reveled in his own ignorance. As so often happens, I fell in love with Vienna because my wife kicked my ass in that direction. We were planning the details of our honeymoon. We’re not Puerto Vallarta or Honolulu-type vacationers, and Europe was on our minds. After offers, counteroffers, and counter-counteroffers,... Read More