Category: Dan Rodricks

Readers of this column might remember a Sunday piece from last summer about the man in the photo above: Dennis Slaughter, a "somewhat disabled" fellow who sells The Sun on the Edmondson Avenue median strip in the Hunting Ridge neighborhood of Southwest Baltimore. After a couple of punks robbed him at gunpoint, the people of … Continue reading The kindness of neighbors, part II

Kamala Harris aced the test I set for a presidential candidate in my Baltimore Sun column: She spoke of children, families and the American future numerous times and in numerous ways during last night’s televised debate. Trump, on the other day, failed miserably: The only time he came close to referencing the welfare of children … Continue reading The Trump Apocalypse

News Item: In New York on Friday, Trump lashed out again at E. Jean Carroll, the woman he was found to have sexually assaulted and defamed, saying the attack never happened and, besides, had he wanted to commit such an assault, "she would not have been the chosen one. She would not have been the … Continue reading And the Trump campaign misses an opportunity to keep him from saying crazy, vulgar things in public

I know what it looks like. But I am not to blame for what happened to this 1973 Dom Perignon. It was bottled when I was a freshman in college. I came to it late in its life. I believe the provenance was Moët & Chandon at Epernay or Hautvillers to the U.S. distributor in … Continue reading Stuff happens: The maderisation of a fine French champagne

My first pay phone was inside a glass-and-steel, stand-alone booth in front of a gas station in a small Massachusetts town. It’s possible for an eighth-grader to fall in love, and that’s a hard thing to admit out loud, in so many words, in the kitchen of your home, where there’s only one phone on … Continue reading Pay Phone

Pardon my reveries . . . On a Labor Day hike, I came across this singular orange leaf. The calendar gives us three more weeks of summer, but here, I thought, was a premature sign of fall -- this one orange leaf in a field by a river. It seemed to beckon me, with its … Continue reading First fallen and fallen too soon

Nicholas Kristof, the preachy New York Times columnist, says we should not look down our noses at Trump supporters, that it’s elitist to demean them, that we should try to understand them.I used to worry that we were being too hasty to dismiss the millions of Americans who think Trump should be president, that we … Continue reading Try to understand Trump voters? Uh, no thanks.

That phrase has been stuck in my head since I first heard the scholar Joseph Campbell utter it 30-plus years ago during one of Bill Moyers’ PBS interviews. MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of… being helped by hidden hands?CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown … Continue reading “Follow your bliss.”

Summer Carrot Salad Italiano This Sicilian carrot salad is the most popular dish I make in summer because, whenever I serve it to family or guests, it quickly disappears — “They inhale it” — and people want the recipe. Those are pretty good indicators that you’ve scored a hit. (The photo at top is not … Continue reading You don’t need another recipe, except this one: Italian summer carrot salad

Driving through Carroll County one sunny day, I came upon this place where the road crossed the South Branch of the Gunpowder Falls and could not believe what I was seeing — a property that looked like a golf course, except it wasn’t a golf course. It was a vast field without a single tree. … Continue reading Stop mowing, start planting, and return to the greener, richer used-to-be