I had two grandfathers whose role in my life could not have been more different. One died at age 52, before I was born, and the other was an important person to me till he died at age 89, when I was 35 years old. The first was married twice, and both my grandmother and …
You may have heard that we’re a little more than three months away from Republicans taking back control of Congress from the Democrats. Apparently voters have realized they made a horrible mistake in voting out Donald Trump and taking control of Congress away from the GOP. Huh? They’d rather have great Americans like Josh Hawley, …
I was 11 years old the first time I had the feeling. I don’t remember much about the newspaper, other than to tell you it was a local weekly in Huber Heights, Ohio. I opened up the sports page, looked at the bottom of the broadsheet and saw my name and picture with a column …
THERE ARE FEW BETTER FEELINGS THAN BEING IN PRINT Read More »
The summer of 1976 was my first as an adult living without air conditioning. That summer and the one that followed were the only two in my life that I lived outside the United States. I don’t remember them being particularly hot summers, which is good because not only didn’t we have air conditioning, we …
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. William Butler Yeats’ classic poem “The Second Coming” is better known for its closing lines than the opening ones, but it says so much about all that’s wrong with our country these days. If you …
Very few people get to go everywhere and see everything. People travel more than they once did, but there are still people who never go anywhere. Five years ago, I was in upstate New York at a nearly empty Pizza Hut. My waiter was 18 years old and he had never been farther than a …
If the least meaningful response to children being murdered is “thoughts and prayers,” one that is almost as silly is tearing down the school building and replacing it to help traumatized survivors. In Uvalde, on the other hand, there is a building that could be razed to make a difference. The police department. By now …
In March 1990, when I was covering college basketball for the Reno Gazette-Journal, I was driving from Reno to Boise, Idaho (only 35 miles from my favorite Idaho town, Tickle Me). to cover the Big Sky Conference basketball tournament. It was a pretty nice day and I was breezing along in my Pontiac Fiero, listening …
In Tuesday’s post about the 12 best things in American history, I promised a followup post about the worst things. When I started working on it, I realized it would be silly to rate the worsts from 1-12 or from 12-1. In addition, I am having trouble separating bad things we did from bad things …
Six years ago in another venue, I made a list of what I thought were the 10 greatest moments in American history. Looking back, I decided there were two others that needed to be mentioned, but I didn’t want to remove any of the original ones. So I dropped my original No. 10 to 12th …
