The woman I call Mrs. Wilson is leaving my park in northern New York – but nothing is simple with Mrs. Wilson. Readers might remember her. She shovels snow in high heels in the North Country when she claims to be in Alabama. She chained herself to a tree. She makes herself bulletproof by accusing …
Liebling said, ‘A girl can sleep with one guy but not be called a trollop. I covered one war but I am labelled a war correspondent’. Ten years ago, Frank Rolfe said, ‘Owning a mobile home park is like owning a Waffle House where the customers are chained to their tables.’ Frank is the fifth-largest …
A man mounts a stage in the Catskills. He looks out at the audience but he can’t see much, because the lights blind him. Glasses clink, people look up expectantly. A drop of sweat falls from his armpit into his tee shirt. Another runnels down the side of his face. He contemplates telling a Jew …
In US tax law, a ‘whipsaw’ effect is said to happen when the government gets it coming and going because two or more taxpayers treat a payment inconsistently. For example, if a buyer of a business allocates a portion of the purchase price to a covenant not to compete but the seller does not allocate …
Phaedo is a deeply affecting story, but the philosophy is problematic. It is one of the dialogues in which Plato – or, Plato speaking though his avatar, Socrates – discusses the theory of forms. The idea is that there is a world of forms, in which the essence of things exist. Things in our world …
This afternoon, I received a registered letter telling me that a resident in my park in northern New York thinks that my manager is blowing off his job. That is usually untrue, but a registered letter is a marker that the sender is trying to lay a paper trail. A paper trail means the threat …
Jinx Lennon has a standard Paddy resume. He worked on building sites in London after school and poured beer at South Street Seaport for a while before he returned to his hometown in the northeast corner of the Republic of Ireland to make music. Here’s what an article in the Village Voice said about him: …
My torts professor was old-school. Short, pudgy, longish gray hair, black-rimmed glasses, Santa Claus beard. He was one of eight people who graduated from the law school summa cum laude in the decades between 1969 and 2007. He clerked for Thurgood Marshall, worked as general counsel for the United Mine Workers, and has taught torts …
Beavis, Butt-Head and the Manufactured Housing Industry Read More »
Imagine Caesar took his troops to the Rubicon, crossed the river and then, a thousand paces later, turned back. The Senate did not know what to do with him until the leader of the Parthians offered to act as an intermediary. He retired to Cappadocia with a few hand-picked troops, where he lived out his …
Earlier this month, a woman named Bella Montoya banged on the walls of her coffin during her wake. She was not as dead as had been previously believed. Assembled family and clergy undid the screws and opened the box. Ms. Montoya left her wake standing up. I have had trouble recently with a maintenance guy …