"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
0630: Alarm goes off. Much to do if I’m to leave by 0800 — shave, brush teeth, shower, make coffee, get the bike ready, pack what I’ll need for the day, etc. 0700: What was that? Thunder? Hard to tell with the shower blasting. Maybe Donna’s moving the dressers around. I sure hope so. 0710: […]
Our daughter Polly flew in from Las Vegas yesterday, and later this afternoon we’re going over to our friend Dee’s home for Thanksgiving dinner. We don’t have to cook, and for that I’m sort of thankful. Sort of, because we’d originally planned to cook Thanksgiving dinner at home, and now I’m at loose ends with […]
When I want fake news, I skip right past the Weekly World News, The Daily Show, and The Onion, and go straight to the source: the Korean Central News Agency, official press agency of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea. Anyone who follows the haps in North Korea knows Dear Leader Kim Jong Il is […]
When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he reportedly said “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.” It’s impossible to overstate the impact Uncle Tom’s Cabin had on mid-19th Century America, indeed the world. Lincoln was dead on. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a barn-burner, even today. What a […]
We’re not riding in the annual El Tour de Tucson today. We rode it last year; afterward, the consensus of our riding group was that it’s too dangerous, what with inexperienced riders weaving in front of you and inexplicably stopping, jersey-clad poseurs whizzing by right left and in between, hit & run road ragers mowing […]
“If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?” Sarah Palin, Going Rogue. Good question, Sarah! Now you’ve got me thinking . . . If God had not intended for us to burn books, how come He made them flammable? If God had not intended for […]
Update (11/19/09): more than two months with no response. Time to ramp it up a notch: The Honorable Gabrielle Giffords November 19, 2009 U.S. House of Representatives 1728 Longworth House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Dear Congresswoman Giffords, I mailed the attached letter to the US Air Force Chief of Staff on September 16, 2009 […]
Snagged from Facebook, five minutes ago: I’m currently struggling through Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book I realized I had never read. The hardest part, for me, is the depiction of white attitudes toward blacks in mid-1800s America, and the language used to convey those attitudes. And then I remember growing up with whites who still […]