Few public servants have left as deep and multifaceted a mark on American life as Barney Frank. For more than three decades representing Massachusetts in Congress, Frank built a reputation for something rare in politics: unflinching honesty, intellectual rigor, and a relentless commitment to equality. He didn’t just advocate for change — he helped architect it. 

The morning was perfect, beyond any expectation. We went to the orchid show, and we were in a pink-cloud honeymoon that neither of us expected but we both felt intensely for an hour and a half.

With all the ruin emanating from the Oval Office on a daily basis, it’s easy to fall into quiet despair. Following the news feels like monitoring a malignant tumor as it spreads outward from the epicenter of the free world, jumping oceans, URLs, and psyches, threatening the globe on macro and micro levels simultaneously. Only this sickness, this decidedly opportunistic cancer, has never been seen before. Certainly this level of rot has not been diagnosed in our 250-year history.

As the author of “The Book Nook,” a syndicated column I wrote from 1977 to 2006, I met many interesting writers. One of them was Jay Quinn, who passed away without fanfare (except for an obituary in the Walker’s Funeral Home website) on July 28, 2025.

There are sports stories. There are love stories. And then — very rarely — there are stories that blur the line so completely that you forget which one you’re reading.

Trump’s domestic agenda is so dystopian it’s hard to believe. Unleashing masked goons onto U.S. streets, building concentration camps, punishing the media, threatening judges, and labeling critics “enemies of the state” all vie for his most Hitlerian maneuvers.