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| A Date With the Departed |
| November 1, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By THOMAS LYNCH
HE pumpkins, penny candy and neighborly hordes of goblins and ghosts shouting “Trick or treat!” remind us of the ancients and their belief that the souls of the dead must be appeased. But it's the days that follow Halloween that most interest ... |
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| Michigan's Song of Itself |
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April 6, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Michigan’s Song of Itself
By THOMAS LYNCH
Milford, Mich.
THE University of Michigan had a chance to shine at the end of February when our symphony orchestra toured by bus from Ann Arbor to Carnegie Hall. The musicians made stops at Oberlin and Cornell before getting to West 57th Street. ... |
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| Return of the Prince |
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November 25, 2007
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Return of the Prince
By THOMAS LYNCH
Milford, Mich.
“DEMOCRACY is untidy,” said Donald Rumsfeld.
“It sure is,” we Michiganders nod, watching our state legislators navigate fecklessly between tax increases and budget cuts trying to keep Lansing’s ship of state afloat.
The autumn has been spent under the threat of a ... |
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| The Dispirit of '67 |
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August 5, 2007
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; The Dispirit of '67
By THOMAS LYNCH
Milford, Mich.
THE men I have coffee with most mornings in town are all in what we never call the last trimester of our lives. We're winding down, golfing more, worried that what's ahead won't be as good as what's gone before. ... |
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| In Michigan, Not Even the Dead Are Safe |
| April 29, 2007
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By THOMAS LYNCH
HE big cemetery with the name like a golf course out on the Interstate across from the mall was seized by a state conservator this winter. Seems someone took the money -- $70 million in prepaid trust funds -- and ran. It's one of ... |
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| When Latvian Eyes Are Smiling |
| March 17, 2006
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By THOMAS LYNCH
ast year they opened a new Irish pub on Main Street here. O'Callaghan's they call it, and it's owned by two Palestinians who did it up in high Paddy style, with snugs and dark hardwoods, Guinness and designer lagers and a couple of imported ... |
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| Mourning in America |
| February 26, 2006
Review By THOMAS LYNCH
ex and the dead, William Butler Yeats wrote to Olivia Shakespear nearly 80 years ago, are the only two topics that "can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mind." Sandra M. Gilbert got close to the first topic more than ... |
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| Left Behind |
| August 17, 2005
By THOMAS LYNCH
ike President Bush, I enjoy clearing brush in August. We both like quittance of the suit and tie, freedom from duty and detail and to breathe deeply the insouciant air of summer.
He makes for his ranch in Crawford, Tex., a town with no bars ... |
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| Our Near-Death Experience |
| April 9, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By THOMAS LYNCH
oveen, Ireland -- IMAGES of the papal wake dominated the news this week: the dead man's body vested, mitered, laid out among his people in St. Peter's Square, blessed with water and incense, borne from one station to the next in a final journey. ... |
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| We Should Witness the Death of McVeigh |
| February 20, 2001
EDITORIAL DESK
By THOMAS LYNCH
fter 30 years directing funerals, I've come to believe in open caskets. A service to which everybody but the deceased is invited, like a wedding without the bride or a baptism without the baby, denies the essential reality of the occasion, misses the focal ... |
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| A Hero of the Celtic Renaissance |
| December 15, 2000
EDITORIAL DESK
By THOMAS LYNCH
rom the cottage I keep in West Clare, I sometimes look across the Shannon Estuary to the Kerry Hills. From the end of the peninsula, I can make out Ballybunion, where Bill Clinton golfed in September 1998, in the midst of the Monica ... |
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| Endpaper; The Going Rate |
| October 15, 2000
MAGAZINE DESK
By THOMAS LYNCH
he widow wanted the cherry coffin. All she could think of was her husband, dead. Dead at 40 in the dead of winter; dead in the front yard of a Sunday morning with the ice spud beside him and his ice-fishing gear -- tip-ups ... |
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| A Man's Right to Choose |
| 2000
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By THOMAS LYNCH
ilford -- I have a daughter and three sons. If there is better duty than being the dad, I have never found it. But on one subject -- the nature of sex and its possible outcomes -- the counsel I'm required to give my sons, ... |
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| As Memory Itself Runs Out of Time |
| December 26, 1999
EDITORIAL DESKBy THOMAS LYNCH
n 1975, when my father was my age, he had a bronze plate engraved with his name and two dates. ''Edward Lynch,'' it read, ''1924-1999.'' He put it on a bronze casket in our casket showroom to demonstrate how the up-market units could be ... |
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| Grief, Real and Imagined |
| October 30, 1999
EDITORIAL DESK
By THOMAS LYNCH
hen planes fall from the sky, or boats sink in the seas, or trains collide -- whenever the worst that can happen happens -- everyone in earshot is given pause. And pause we must, over this past week's sadness with Payne Stewart, the husband, ... |
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| Why Buy More Time? |
| March 14, 1999
By THOMAS LYNCH
he news, lately reported, that the life span of humans might be doubled in the next century is cause for sober and deliberate contemplation. Like so much that is baffling and wondrous, the word comes from a conference in Southern California. Dr. Gregory Stock of ... |
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| Misplaced Mourning |
| August 31, 1998
By THOMAS LYNCH
he death notices in The Daily Telegraph make it plain. Most everyone here dies peaceably, in the hospital or after a brief illness. There are, of course, the sad exceptions. One unfortunate local died ''tragically whilst walking in the Dolomites.'' One ''went to sleep in ... |
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| Socko Finish |
| July 12, 1998
By THOMAS LYNCH
y son and I were moving caskets -- an oak with Celtic crosses on the corners, a cherry with a finish like that of our dining-room table, a cardboard box with a reinforced bottom, caskets that could be buried, burned, blown into space or set ... |
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