D. Earl Stevens

On Dec. 22, 1944, on a brutally cold and snowy battlefield in Bastogne, Belgium, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe's rough-and-ready 101st Airborne Division was surrounded and outnumbered by German armor units, which had literally come out of nowhere.

The fighting had been bloody and intense, and the Germans, sensing victory, made a final push to prevail in World War II. Before hitting the Americans with everything they had, the German command sent a message to McAuliffe, demanding he surrender his army.

McAuliffe snatched the missive, and then typed one of his own: “NUTS!”...

While growing up in a working-class town in New Jersey, my family took the morning and evening newspapers, the latter of which I dutifully delivered to the houses in my tangled neighborhood and along the two main thoroughfares that tucked us all in.

When I’d get home from school, there’d be a mountain of bundled papers waiting for me on the curb. I’d sigh, roll ‘em up, wrap ‘em in a rubber band, pile ‘em in a Santa-like sack, hop on my bike, and sling ‘em in the vicinity of people’s porches. I had more than a few “uh-oh” moments when a paper would get away from me and head straight for a window, or a subscriber’s unsuspecting flower pot.

That’s what mass-communicating looked like back in the 1960s and 70s....

I will never get over the attack on my country January 6, 2021, by the anti-American lowlife, Donald J. Trump.

I will never move on until the man who spearheaded that attack is brought to justice.

Trump is the most dangerous man in the world, and if this has somehow escaped you until this point, he made the case yet again Wednesday night when he assaulted a podium, a microphone and our senses on primetime TV, telling approximately four lies every minute....

More incomprehensible tragedy visited the United States of America when we learned that Hollywood legend Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their Los Angeles home Sunday.

The couple’s son, Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested in connection with the deaths. He has been charged with murder.

So now we hold on tight and try to process yet more senseless pain and hurt in a world that is spinning too damn quickly, even if it has always been well out of our control....

I want to pour you a shot of good news, with a stiff chaser.

It won’t wipe away all your troubles, but it might make you feel warm and fuzzy for about 30 minutes — maybe longer if you just allow yourself to go with the buzz …

(BARTENDER’S TIP: Allow yourself to go with the buzz. It’s been a hard damn decade.)...