Ground Rules

I grew up thinking there were a couple of ground rules to the sport of democracy as it is played in the United States.  One is the separation of church and state, the other is the protection of minority rights. If you’re a typical American, you don’t want your government taken over by a religious […]

An Editor, an Editor, My Kingdom for an Editor

I finished my first real ebook yesterday.  Wait a minute, I hear you saying, you’ve been using an electronic reader for more than a year now and must have read a lot of ebooks.  True, but this time I’m talking about a dedicated ebook, published through Amazon and offered as a $2.99 Kindle download.  The […]

Two Kinds of People

A friend posted a nasty little joke photo to Facebook.  No, not the one on the left, which is just one of many anti-Michelle Obama images I found on the net.  His showed Lucy and Ricky facing each other with caption balloons above their heads.  Lucy: “The doctor says I can’t have sex for six […]

Paul’s DVD Reviews

“Jesus lady, help can’t even help us.” — Shea Whigham as Dennis Farrell in Splinter Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010, Canada) I didn’t know until just now, looking at the reviews, that this documentary movie was released in 3D. I watched it at home in 2D (albeit high def) and was blown away.  I’m not […]

Air-Minded: Nose Art at the Air Museum

Project Boneyard is now on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum, where I volunteer as a tour guide.  It’s an art project using old aircraft and aircraft parts as canvases.  When I wrote about it last week, the exhibit hadn’t officially opened and just a few outdoor aircraft were on display. I thought […]

Tucson’s Bike Church Sanctuary

The Tucson Bike Church Sanctuary is a place where relatives and friends of bicyclists killed on the streets of our town can come to remember them, and even leave notes and mementos.  It’s made, as you can see, of bicycle parts.  Although I didn’t see the panels, I’m told it’s lighted at night by solar […]

You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books. My local school district in Tucson, Arizona is at the center of a growing national and international scandal over the racially-motivated confiscation and banning of textbooks, novels, and plays.  I wrote about the district’s actions here and here.  To reach […]

Tubac Car Show

What, another gearhead post?  Sure, why the hell not? Every January the Santa Cruz Valley Car Nuts put on a car show at the golf course in Tubac, Arizona.  Classics, collector cars, muscle cars, sports cars, trucks, exotics … it’s a nice show, and I found it much easier to take in than the enormous […]