We have hit the dog days of summer and it is hot. But not just hot where you can fry an egg on the sidewalk, I'm talking smelting steel hot. Now hot is okay for some things which I will not enumerate here, but for most things such as living, it really makes life tough. You see, I sweat, but not just a little, I sweat a lot. Yeah, gross, but I am who I am: I was raised to withstand 40 degrees below...

During the summer I travel a good bit, so I always pack a towel, never panic, and drink at least one Pan-gallactic gargle blaster a week. The towel comes in handy, especially if I have to go to the beach. I love the beach, but sand gets in everywhere. I do like the way the waves come all the way up on shore and flap around a bit. Traveling during the summer keeps me busy, keep me employed and keeps...

It is drifting into late summer. July 15th has come and gone, and we are downhill from here to the new year. The heat is awful and this city smells bad when it heats up. Right now, it's Sunday morning; I feel fine, but I can already detect a hint of sweat on the brow, which means we are going up over 100F today. Summer is my punishment. I make no bones about not liking the heat. It is natural that...

I could just as well be writing about Harry Potter. Neither Sherlock Holmes nor Harry Potter are real people. They came out of the pens and the imaginations of their creaters, Arthur Conan Doyla and J. K. Rowlings, respectively. Nobody, almost nobody, has a problem with that idea. Many readers wish they were real, and both characters have made it to the silver screen with more or less success. Yet,...

I have taken up reading Arthur Conan Doyle again--some thirty years after I read it all the first time. The first time through I was so very young that all I read were the stories, but the stories--or more specifically--what happens in the stories has little to do with Doyle's literary art. He always thought that his stories about Sherlock Holmes were nothing more than a frivolous drift into fantas...