When I am … completely myself, entirely alone … or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come I know not, nor can I force them. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart I remember the moment with clarity. I was riding my bike, thinking of nothing in particular, when the clear and obvious solution to a calculus problem I had flubbed on a university exam a few weeks earlier popped into my head. We

David Sherman   What if I stop? Pull the plug. Resist the click? Press reset on my brain and stop reading, watching, laughing at the news in its myriad of formats? Can I have breakfast or brush my teeth without first checking the Times and its daily recount of the lunatic ravings of the sick and sordid, and the staid news empire’s endless criticism and condemnation of same. Once upon a time it offered succor. Now it’s the howling of the hopeless and vanquished into an exhaust

Bob Morrissey I caused quite a stir recently when I went for my semi-annual pedicure — the one I get before every golf season. As I entered the establishment, several women clients getting their feet treated peered over in my direction as if to say, “Who does this guy think he is, coming in here?” Even the five busy pedicurists dropped what they were doing. Surprised, all I could think of to say was, “You people look like you’ve never seen a man before.” With that, one of the