You know, God bless, but I lived in DC for a while in a black community. My husband is black (and his mother was a DC native) and I can just imagine her and her relatives dealing with the white-guilt do-gooders with the upspeak. “So we [we?] decided to? Bring healthy food? To Ward 8?” “The White Man’s Burden” indeed.

I have no useful advice but I’ll pass along this:

I just learned recently that Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair, without which modern cubicle life would be impossible. It is thought that he wrote “The Declaration of Independence” while sitting in one. So the USA has that going for it!

These are not new and probably you and everyone else has already read them but I loved Special Topics in Calamity Physics and A Visit From the Goon Squad and Heft. Loved them. And for non fiction just read everything by Erik Larson and by Bill Bryson, if you haven’t already. That should keep you busy!

You’re too late with your Apothecary hipster bar. Damien Hirst and Matthew Freud pretty much did it in London in 1998.

I am very late but wanted to address two very important points that you brought up:

No, pies all year long! I’m inept, so I make crumbles (there’s a crust on the bottom, and then some more crust on top, and they’re easier big delicious gooey messes.) I am also not ashamed to sometimes use canned fruit so apple, peach, blueberry, any and all of it 365 days a year.

I think what’s really important here is that I’m in the process of shifting clothes around now that it’s getting cooler and I have both of those sweaters. Like many men I never throw any clothes away and if it was good enough to wear during the GHW Bush administration it’s good enough to wear today. Hell, I may be…

I would run for president as an unpaid intern as long as someone provided lunches and a discounted MetroCard/Amtrak vouchers. I know PowerPoint!

I love time shifting stuff like this.

I checked out Machurian Candiate myself. Lawrence Harvey was born in 1928, and Angela Lansbury in 1925. So three years!

She was only three years older than her son in The Manchurian Candidate. Although I don’t recommend that movie for children.

A lot of places do, especially places popular with foreigners who can feign ignorance of the American tipping culture. I was at a crowded hotel bar a few weeks ago, standing room only, I got our drinks at the bar, kept leaving money for the bartender, got the bill (we ran a tab) and added 20% but they had already…

You always have the best jpegs and gifs. You don’t work in library science or data management or something like that, do you?

All the photos really are perfect. Maybe Carson’s next book could be a coffee table collection called Awkward Carson Book Signing Photos. How America continues to be the most powerful nation on earth baffles me, and I’m a 12th-generation American.

The dome head is in, take it from this guy who took the plunge years ago. If you have gray hair, like my husband and I do, you look a lot younger if your head is nicely shaped and you get rid of the hair. In my building half the men have shaved heads. And think of all the money we’re saving on barber bills!

I’m a pretty faithful reader of I Thee Dread but somehow I missed your mother’s invaluable contribution to the comments section. She sounds wonderful. I’d love to meet her if she ever comes to New York to visit you!

Clinic escort. You’re a braver person than I. I used to walk by a clinic every so often, just me, a guy, alone, and I used to get harassed. I used to yell back at them, “I’m not here to get an abortion, you morons. I’m just trying to get to the subway.”

It’s a holiday in Cambodia.