Trump is going to find that cell at Attica State Prison very uncomfortable because he’ll be meeting a lot of residents who turned to a life of crime after they lost their NYC apartments because of his predatory landlord practices. He’ll be begging Putin to stick him in a Siberian gulag. The more they circle in on him, the more my heart sings.

My cousin Haley Vail who just graduated from high school. Her grandmother is my first cousin & friend Jane Vail Schroeder; her great-grandmother is my mother’s sister & my favorite aunt Rosemary Vail. I used to babysit Haley & her younger sister Brianna when they were small. They’re from the Vail clan who are more siblings than cousins.

My aunt Rosemary met her husband Wayne in the small village outside St. Paul that my parents moved to after they got married. Wayne’s parents, who both lived to over 100, got the first TV in town in 1948 & everyday at 4:00 would open their house to let the town kids come in & watch Howdy Doody.

Haley is just an awesome kid.

The OJ Simpson phenomenon is so psychologically remarkable. We know he was a wife beater & is probably a murderer but there’s something so endearing, almost mesmerizing, about his personality. Is it his good-looks or the warmth of his smile? Or just that he has the talents of all good con artists? It used to be a literary conceit to describe character by one’s physical description but hopefully writers have evolved beyond that nonsense. You can’t tell much about others based on how they look.