Adlai Stevenson once said, "Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, and some on golf courses." Now we need to allow for the fact that it was the 1950s, and so Stevenson couldn't help but have a blinkered view of the world's religious diversity. In our more enlightened era we have broadened our understanding of this diversity to include, not only golf, but every conceivable form of worship from archery to ziplining. The return on sweat and hard work is not just physical. It is also serenity, a renewed sense of purpose, and the comforting feeling that none of us is, as the pundits …

The case of Mikhail Semenko, the 28-year-old former Seton Hall graduate student and accused Russian spy, whose Facebook page not too long ago had over 400  friends on it, has many of us wondering the same thing: Could a "mole" be burrowing its way through our own Facebook page? Sure, we have a screening process. We don't just friend anyone. No doubt Britain's MI5 would say the same thing. Yet, I've noticed that, whenever James Bond is sent on a top secret mission, the airport where he lands is already crawling with enemy agents on the lookout for him. Someone should check out Miss Moneypenny …

I am probably the only person left in America who does not own a mobile communication device. I say "probably the only person" because, though the other one is on record as having voted for FDR in 1936, she is a tough old girl and may still be around. Whenever someone asks me why, I am up front about the fact that most people don't have an urgent need to reach me. So, naturally, I am wary of those that do. "I'll call you after the movie if we're going to somebody's house. Or from the park unless we don't end up going there either. By the way do we have plans for the Fourth because there's …

Through some kind of mix-up, I have acquired a cardiologist. OK, it wasn't a total mix-up. We were in the not-implausible setting of the emergency room of a local hospital when he offered me his business card, and my blood pressure did happen to have risen to a level not recognized as entirely human by medical science. But that was a while ago, and more often than not the evidence of day-to-day life leads me to the conclusion that I am seeing the wrong type of specialist. I've never had the slightest pain in my chest whereas each thing that goes wrong with my house or car seems to give me a …

Ever wonder why you didn't compose your first symphony at age 8? Or know from the same age that you were going to grow up to be an international soccer star and marry a model/singer whose nickname is synonymous with high-end fashion and taste? According to the recently published "Bounce" by Matthew Syed, what separates the rest of us from youthful prodigies like Mozart and David Beckham is not genes, genius, or the fact that people didn't have names like "Trend" or  "Haute Cuisine" where we were growing up, but 10,000 hours of practice. This statistic explains some lags in my own development…

It was an experience that every creaky-jointed, middle-aged parent who takes up a martial art should have. I had read that the 1984 "Karate Kid" (movie debut of South Orange's own Elisabeth Shue!) was going to be remade with Jackie Chan playing the role of self-defense mentor to the boy who finds himself in over his head at what must be the School for Insane Bullies and their Victims. The original, starring Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi, the elderly sage with an awesome back kick and a unique method for combining karate training with automobile upkeep ("Wax on! Wax off! Daniel-san!"), was one of …

Which group of athletes moves faster—runners or golfers? You'd think the answer would be obvious, since during a typical golf game play often seems to slow to the point where no one is moving at all. But we should not rush runner-like to judgment either. With a four-day Masters Tournament behind us and the Boston Marathon (where four days would be an exceptionally poor time) happening today, it may even be the moment to ask just what kind of race would pit runners against golfers in the first place. Well, sports fans, there is one. In the race to have the most equipment, or "stuff," that has …

Watching their kids approach the Niagara Falls of adolescence, parents of middle schoolers may wonder just how much of a heads-up to give them about what lies ahead. If you start shouting and making frantic arm gestures now, you will not have any energy left for when they are 16. But if you don't issue some kind of warning—well, that's one sudden drop. The hardest question for parents, though, is whether to try to offer their offspring guidance by sharing with them classified information about their own adolescence. More than likely, this was no "High School Musical," where the big "problem" …

"Shouldn't be long," one of the men panted, "before we can see the Pacific Ocean." "The mountain does," the other agreed between gasps, "seem especially high today." The backyards of suburban New Jersey were only a distant memory now as the pair ran up the steep trail, which was overgrown with thick brambles, undermined by treacherous rocks, and at one point entirely blocked by a woman bending down to leash her golden retriever. Up here, where the only thing that separated you from nature was your ability to flee in the opposite direction from it, you never knew. Anything could be around the …

A couple I know were recently visiting friends and were helping to clear the dishes after dinner when the chopping board in their kitchen caught the husband's eye. "Don't even think about it," his wife warned him when the hosts were out of earshot. "I couldn't break it in a million years," he assured her. "There isn't enough surface area, and the grain is all wrong. Now the new shelves upstairs are another story…" This is the kind of exchange you start having when someone you know (or thought you knew) takes up advanced karate training. Ordinary hard surfaces no longer look the same to this …

In the TNT show "Men of a Certain Age" (starring South Orange's own Andre Braugher!), three middle-aged guys discover the "unique bonds of male friendship" while hiking up mountain trails, attending their kids' school functions and, best of all, eating out. But except for an all-too-brief encounter with a home electrical system, the show has so far missed one of the more "unique" (that is, women won't have anything to do with it) types of male bonding. This type occurs when men from different backgrounds come together to fix, install or, in extreme cases, build from scratch something that is …

When I was growing up, Super Bowl Sunday was a holiday my family didn't celebrate, and so every year when it rolled around we were like many Jews on Christmas. We ordered Chinese food, went to the movies, and wondered what all the fuss was about. Don't ask me why. It had nothing to do with actually being Jewish. Now there are some scary gaps in my religious education. But unless I zoned out for more of Hebrew school than I realized and all the Jews who watched the Saints and Colts on Sunday were forgetting an obscure commandment not "to sit before a wide-screen altar in thy living room and …

The sandwich, history tells us, was invented in the 18th century by a guy too busy running the British navy to leave his office for a leg of mutton or some home-cooked  calves' brains. Also, he was an earl. So when he asked for two pieces of bread with "something chewy in the middle" to be delivered to his desk, people didn't look at him as if he'd just proposed leasing London to the French. They jumped to it, shouting, "You heard the man!  Bread! Sliced meat! On the double!" Circumstances were not so favorable for the 21st-century South Orange dad who may have devised the single most …

"The only thing we have to fear," Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, "is fear itself," but there is a reason why his is not one of the faces on Mount Rushmore. From shin splints to heel spurs, we runners have plenty of dire scenarios to ponder. And let's not forget about the occasional $150 pair of sneakers hurled from close range  by a spouse or loved one who claims you spend "all your time" running. Still, you can always duck these, put in an appearance at breakfast, etc. Harder to elude is the danger that comes not from someone, but something, a creature that seems to rise out of the…

The printer had been going for some time, and the pages were piling up. Clearly I was on some kind of creative roll. "Did you finally," my wife stopped by to ask, "finish your novel about 12th-century Norwegian ice fishermen?" "This isn't my novel. These are my New Year's resolutions," I said with as much pride as if I'd succeeded in accomplishing rather than merely listing them. "This one,' she said, picking up a page at random, "reads like a novel: 'In less time than it takes for a bolt of lightning to hit a golfer on a fairway, I soar  over the head of the referee and send a flying …

I have a recurring daydream, and it does not involve Jennifer Aniston and an otherwise deserted tropical island. (No! Really!) The woman in my daydream has an impressive degree on her wall and a stethoscope around her neck. In an office not too far from downtown South Orange, she is about to listen to my heart and lungs do their stuff when she throws up her hands in despair. "It's no use!" "You finally admit it." I can't help but gloat a little. "There's nothing wrong with you, Baker. And there never will be. Every year we go through the same charade. I check your heart, liver, kidneys. All …

The eyes, as anyone who watches the Food Channel knows, are the windows of the stomach. So for many a food enthusiast, the wake-up call that they need new reading glasses is likely to come when they find themselves squinting at a list of ingredients in order to discern how much paprika or how many onions a recipe requires. (Especially if the recipe is for Bavarian cream pie.) But as befits someone who has recently had to take a step or two back from life’s many-flavored buffet, the call came to me when I noticed I was having trouble making out the nutritional information printed on the …

Does New Jersey have a state sport? We have a state bird (the goldfinch), numerous state troopers, and a state house in Trenton, but is there a sport that defines us to the rest of the country the way that the Iditarod sledding race does for Alaska or celebrity-spotting for some parts of California? For lack of anything more profound to think about, I was exercising my tired brain cells with this question while waiting for a light to change on South Orange Avenue and listening to Springsteen’s “Born to Run” on my car radio: “Highways jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive.” …

The other day, as the first leaf of autumn descended onto the front lawn, my youngest child turned to me, his eyes glowing with excitement and his hands fidgeting to be grasping the handle of a tool that was almost an extension of himself. “It’s time for the raking Olympics, isn’t it, Daddy?” “Soon, son,” I assured him. “We must be patient.” I wish. Actually, the exchange went more like this: Groan. “We’re not going to do that same thing as last year?" “The real Olympics happen every year. Why shouldn’t ours?” I don’t mind bending the truth for a good cause. But I know it is too late. He has …

I once had a karate teacher who liked to hold class in the open air. On an otherwise quiet street in the general vicinity of Mountain Station, he had me marching outside in full view of the world, blocking and kicking my way from one end of a strip of grass to the other during the early evening hours. Sometimes a thick wooden staff was involved, and the sound effects could be bloodcurdling. “Kiai!” I would yell when I reached the end of the kata, or form, I was executing. “No, kiai!” he would reply, amplifying my scream tenfold to the point where I thought the furniture in the houses around …