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Michael DobieNewsday |
A phrase making the rounds these days is wonderful in its fluidity: The path of totality. It sounds like a description of the damage field caused by a...
You scan the photos and smile. She's a little girl making funny faces. Sitting on your daughter's shoulders in a chicken fight. On the field in...
When we were kids, it seemed like we were always outdoors. There was a band of boys my age and we had a routine. One would go the back door of...
A photo sits on a shelf. Or hangs on a wall. Or nestles in a scrapbook with a collection that tells the story of a life. You study them for...
I remember the picture books, the broad pages and sweeping landscapes, the colorful depictions of Earth thousands of years ago, the rocks and ice...
A great many things came to mind for a great many people this past week when Mitch McConnell announced he would be stepping down this fall as leader...
Even admitting all the difficulty we humans have recognizing when something is having a moment, and acknowledging all the times we get it wrong, it...
Sir Edmund Hillary was the first human to stand atop the tallest spot on Earth when he stepped onto the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953,...
The first notes were not perfect, a touch flat, off the familiar line of melody. But as the chair in which the singer sat swiveled to face the...
Ingenuity died in the heavens this week. On Mars, specifically. This is not some grasp at celestial metaphor. Ingenuity, the little helicopter that...
Extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions. Often, these challenges elicit the best from us humans. Such certainly has been the case...
Something remarkable happened this week. More than 22 years after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, New York City officials said they had...
Sometimes the end of an era smacks you in the face. Sometimes it just slips away, so quietly that it takes us time to realize that it's over. Eras are...
It’s just a doorway to a house. Over the years, one of many doorways to many houses. It beckons, as doorways do. But whatever the doorway in...
I'm looking forward to welcoming my ghosts again. They always come this time of year. They're not the haunting kind, except in the sense of how much I...
I held my two newest grandchildren this week. It was exhilarating. And soothing. And nourishing. And instructive. When you hold a newborn, nothing...
Obsolescence creeps in on little cat feet. One watches for signs. A creak in the body here. A memory escaped there. A fluidity of movement...
There is a pond not far from my house. It sits sandwiched between a group of homes and some thick woods along a road. In the dead of winter, the pond...
The attack on Israel by Hamas last month was gruesome and shocking, bloody and vicious. We saw and heard the testimony of survivors, in some cases...
Flaco has flown the coop again. You do remember Flaco, right? He's the spectacular Eurasian eagle-owl that escaped the Central Park Zoo in...
Longtime readers know that I’m a math guy. I love math, always have. I love the power and beauty inherent in numbers, their capacity for both...
And now for some good news: The Beatles are releasing a new song this week. Just writing those words creates a little shiver, the good kind, the...
I’ve never been much of a prognosticator. None of us are, if we’re being honest. We remember we got it right, and wipe our memory banks clean of...
NASA quietly launched a probe into deep space Friday — as quietly as one can launch a probe that costs about $850 million and will take six years...
One great perplexity of our times is the inability of scientists, experts and other leaders to persuade large swaths of the country, and the world in...
I've always liked a rainy day. It's a tap from Mother Nature, a replenishing of our life force. It's the energy of ions bristling in the air, the...
The dark side of serendipity lies just beneath the surface of our daily lives. We know it's there. We know that bad luck, catastrophically bad luck,...
A journalistic lifetime ago, I crossed paths with Mitt Romney. I had the good fortune to be assigned to cover the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake...
I was driving on Little East Neck Road in Babylon Town the other day. It's like so many Long Island roads, like so many roads everywhere. One lane...