Personal Essay

City Life

Confessions of an Accidental Stay-at-Home Dad

“What happened?” The front-desk attendant at urgent care was curious. “I cut it by accident,” I said, holding up my pinky, wrapped in a bloody […]

City Life

A Grilled Cheese Mystery: My Search for a Simple Sandwich

I can’t deny that I’ve got major skills, all of which have zero marketability. I can identify a Springsteen song two seconds in. I can […]

City Life

My Dad’s Last Day in Court

The earliest signs of my father’s cognitive slip dovetailed with his retirement. He’d somehow managed to keep it together for his clients until his very […]

City Life

Why I’m Quitting Dating Apps (for Now)

How was your date?” a close friend asked me as soon as I walked into her house one day this fall. Like me, she is […]

City Life

Remembering the Real Victim in the Karen Read Case, My Friend John O’Keefe

My phone was still on silent when I woke the morning of January 30, 2022, to four missed calls and a text from a friend […]

City Life

Why White Men Are the Secret Sauce to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

As I built my PR company on the premise of helping companies understand and actualize the competitive advantage of inclusion, I realized something: You can’t […]

City Life

So You Want to Get Rich Quick?

You never really learn much about life from your triumphs. You learn from your mistakes. I’ve been in the investment world for decades, and my […]

City Life

Why I Did the Charles Stuart HBO Doc

Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning is a three-part HBO original documentary series exploring Boston’s history of race-based hostilities against the backdrop of the […]

City Life

Why I Left the Boston Ballet

Standing in the wings before the curtain lifted for the third and final act of The Sleeping Beauty, I became acutely aware of the backstage […]

City Life

Confessions of a Twitcher

I used to do cocaine. A lot of it. As in, five out of seven nights a week. It might not be immediately apparent what […]

Life & Style

Meditating on the Art of Marriage

This is a love story, both simple and tricky, as all love stories are. I will begin with the tricky part, on Lake Champlain in […]

Travel

Into the Antarctic Void: My Luxury Cruise to Breathtaking Desolation

I have a photo of myself standing high on a ridge overlooking Neko Harbor in Antarctica. I appear to be smiling, and my hatless head […]

City Life

The Case Against Trying To ‘Have It All’

Walt Disney once said that if you can visualize it and if you can dream it, there’s a way to do it. Yet this was […]

City Life

To Jeep, or Not to Jeep, That is the Question

It was the first week of May 2022, and I was thinking about my car, specifically how long it was going to last. My hope […]

City Life

Jane Swift and Me, 20 Years Later

On a warm, sunny day this past summer, I drove up a long driveway to former Governor Jane Swift’s Williamstown farm, located high on a […]