William Safire would like you to think about the fourth quarter, and he does not mean the end of the football game: He means the last part of your life, the years about which you concoct elaborate daydreams that involve sleeping in, fishing and being the

Mrs. T and I are working our way from Maine to New Hampshire to Massachusetts, then back to Maine. We spent Sunday night in Portland, where we stayed at the Pomegranate Inn , a bed-and-breakfast that is also a gallery.

LOS ANGELES I recently returned home from a long road trip that gave me a chance to catch up with media industry friends and mentors working in D.C., Philadelphia and Chicago.

A walk in the woods with Ernie Schuyler is like no other. He ambles along in slo-mo, stopping here, poking there, looking up, down, overhead and sideways, exclaiming "Wow!" and "Look at this!" and, with humble candor, "How did I miss that?"

Bill Burt It has been lost in the comparisons to decades earlier — Larry vs. Magic, Tinseltown vs. Beantown, East vs. West or Pat Riley vs. K.C. Jones. It also has been lost in the fact that Kobe Bryant apparently has to show America he can win one wi