Columns

This week marks the 10-year anniversary of this column. Over the last decade, I have often addressed client questions or traits that the amazing and hardworking people of our region embody.

There might be a replacement for khaki shorts and funny T-shirts as the most generic clothing for dads.

In cable news, we practice the persuasive arts — and I’ll be the first to admit that we commentators have a penchant for hyperbole and a tendency to overstate. We especially like to do that with local and midterm elections like New York’s congressional special election.

One of the Black history documentaries that I had marked on my to-see list is the recently released PBS “Gospel” series that is hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

The day after I turned 70, I got an email urging me to buy burial insurance.

I am a blessed man. I am an American. I am a Black American, a descendant of slaves who has been granted the vast opportunities this country has to offer. Praise God. It did not have to be this way.

If you are tired of TV shows like “The Bachelor” where women demean themselves by competing for the “love” of a man; if you are sick of all the shootings and explosions on TV, the canned laughter on sitcoms that mostly aren’t funny (which is why they have to insert canned laughter in the first place); if you want to have your spirit lifted out of the mundane and into the heavens, there is a place you can go.

The mainstream media doesn’t seem to want to talk about this, but it’s important that America and the world face what seems increasingly clear: Vladimir Putin’s best friend in the world — the person prepared to allow Putin to mount additional wars of aggression in Europe — is the leading Republican contender for president of the United States, Donald Trump.

File this in that bulging category, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall.”