What to do this week Unsurprisingly, given this last week, I am in salvage mode. Few gardens escaped the effects of the hurricane, and autumnal frost warnings have started, so the rush has begun to reap and gather as much as I can. First off, I am assessing the damageRead More

Dorian I begin with a shout-out to those of you who have yet to get your power back and are…unable to read this. Yeah, that didn’t really make much sense, did it? I want to be very cautious writing about Nova Scotia’s Dorian experience, given the Bahamas’ Dorian experience, whichRead More

I know I said I was going to hang this week’s content on “recent developments” in stories I’d already covered but this story is an exception: I’m hanging this one on the fact that there have been no recent developments in a story I’ve covered extensively (some might say obsessively)Read More

Editor’s Note: Dorian wreaked some havoc with my ability to work this week, so I am easing back into regular publication by noting some recent developments in stories I’ve already covered. The bottom line, though, is that I am back, I have bought new school supplies (I am not kidding,Read More

Editor’s Note: Dorian wreaked some havoc with my ability to work this week, so I am easing back into regular publication by noting some recent developments in stories I’ve already covered. The bottom line, though, is that I am back, I have bought new school supplies (I am not kidding,Read More

My summer 2019 reading followed a truly strange and definitely unexpected path, one with an interesting and educational, if horrifying, twist that saw me become absorbed in the devastation and death of war. It began with a paperback, torn into two pieces and lacking a back cover, hidden away amongRead More

What to do this week The Spectator‘s gardening columnist will be back to her regular schedule next week. (Full disclosure: the Spectator forgot to tell her we were resuming the weekly publication schedule as of September 11. Sorry Michelle!) Luckily, she has written oodles of advice for September gardeners, andRead More

After a wonderful summer on a bi-weekly publication schedule, I had fully expected to be back to business as usual this week, but the universe had different ideas. On Sunday I lost one of my oldest and dearest friends — an actual “friend of my youth” — and I foundRead More

I am sitting in a board game café as I write this month’s column. I have my phone on the table in front of me, and I am surrounded by young people, most of whom are using computers and/or are holding phones in their hands. Our phones and our computersRead More

To set the tone for their recent article on Twenty-First Century Nuclear Deterrence , four senior American nuclear war-planners approvingly quote from Arms and Influence, Thomas Schelling’s classic 1966 defense of ‘coercive diplomacy’ in the atomic age: The power to hurt – the sheer unacquisitive, unproductive power to destroy thingsRead More