Thirty years ago, they took this failed New York writer out of the city, but they never took the city out of me -- even after I became a successful writer. Now I’m moving from the suburbs to downtown again, where I should be. I was in the ideal suburban location: you can hear the Contoocook River through the open windows, and see it through the trees. But any time you want to go somewhere, including the mailbox, you have to get in your car, and any time you want to find people to talk to, or conduct business beyond buying a pizza, you have to drive to the city or (God forbid) a mall.

I've enjoyed reading your columns on separating from your husband.  You don't whine or blame the immature SOB.  Thats what allows you to write intimate columns about your real life.  Your writing is not sentimental or self-pitying.  Sentiment is good for a writer; sentimenality is bad.  The classic example are these different images of home.  Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."  Edgar Guest, a very popular, slighly older version of Robert Frost wrote, "Home is where the heart is."  If you gotta ask what's the difference, you ain't never gonna know.

What will become of the Wall Street Journal under media baron Rupert Murdoch, who bought the Journal‘s parent company in December for $5.16 billion? We got our first hint last week when he pushed out Marcus Braschli, the WSJ’s managing editor, and put in his own man. He said the changes he wants to make were not moving fast enough (four months). When Murdoch bought the Journal’s parent company in December for $5.16 billion, lovers of excellent journalism experienced a collective chill. The WSJ is the best daily business and finance newspaper in the world, and its coverage of world and national news ranks with the NY Times and Times of London. Now it’s owned by the owner of Fox News, the NY Post and supermarket tabloids all over the world.

The amazing news The Concord Monitor won a Pulitzer Prize got me thinking about my former paper, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, which won the Pulitzer in 1988. It ruined the career of Susan Forrest, one of the two reporters who worked on the story. I’ve always wondered if it was an underlying cause of Susan Forrest's premature death ten years later. In her early 30s, she won the highest honor her profession offers, then kept jumping for another one, falling on her face until she couldn’t jump any more.

I have nothing against Christians or Christianity or any other religion that’s a source of spiritual truth for the believer. Gospel music, the oral tradition of the African-American sermon, and the literature of the New Testament are a source of spiritual truth for me. My fiancee and I have celebrated Christmas together for eight years. Before that, I was a permanent Christmas guest with my godson and his extended family.