King Friday XIII didn't call to wish me Happy Birthday this year. He did call for thirty years. Every November 26 from 1971 to 2001. Then on November 26, 2002, he didn’t. That turned out to be the day his creator, voice, and manipulator Fred Rogers was learning that stomach cancer would kill him very soon. Perhaps I should explain. Fred and I had a lot of silly sessions. Our intense work on scripts or other weighty matters for “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” sometimes requi

We were followed when we went into New York City last weekend. As we approached the Broadway theater district in our car, my cell phone began buzzing on the console. I ignore my phone while driving but Patti picked it up. It was Capital One calling. Well, texting anyhow. They wanted me to know that I could use my Capital One card to park in the lot just down the block on the right. I realized Capital One also knew exactly what time we had triggered the Lincoln Tunnel toll-

“We become the stories we hear.” The setting was the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., late 1978. We were celebrating the introduction of a Senate bill to establish a National Endowment for Children’s Television—a concept that I had hatched, that Senator H. John Heinz III and others were sponsoring, and that my dear friend Nick would be shepherding into passage. A big-time producer of children’s TV programs that featured a lot of unmotivated violence was there. He had just as