Correct Thing News Today

‘It is not the correct thing … to begin the Lenten season by grumbling.’

“My ego says: ‘You’re better than this,’” says the Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic. “And my id says: ‘Not today. Deal with it.’”

℘℘℘ My father, Michael Rogers, was a bartender at New York’s legendary Astor Bar from 1936 to 1965. The photo above was taken for the N.Y. Daily News series, “The Correct Thing,” on tipping bartenders. It’s not a good shot of him, as it doesn’t do justice to his hair, wavy and deep black, a color he likened to “the inside of a raven’s wing.” He was born in Drumlish, County Longford, in 1900 or 1903 (accounts vary) and, in 1926, he and his Longford mate, Hughie Prunty, havi...