Because the recent announcement of a long-awaited nuclear accord with Iran happens to coincide with the publication of my book, The Overthrow of the Persian Peacock Throne, I am compelled to comment.

The hardest thing these days Is to maintain a single view Of anything.

“If there is one thing that brings Vineyarders together, male and female, rich and not-so rich, across ethnic and social lines, it is and has been basketball. That is Martha’s Vineyard’s best-kept secret.”

By the time the third victim of the Mother Emanuel Church massacre was laid to rest, I was back from two visits to Charleston and on Martha’s Vineyard, the thankfully welcoming place where so many of my friends have weighed in, expressing the pain felt around the world about what happened there.

I’ve been thinking a lot about movies lately. Well, not movies actually, but going to the movies. Big difference.

I’ve been a delivery skipper since the late 1960s. I’m not a chicken on the water, but other people on boats scare me. I never know if that boat heading at me has a competent crew or is the local ship of fools.