"No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.” — Lily Tomlin
“A screaming comes across the sky.” – Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) Ritual, by Mo Hayder Okay detective thriller with a written-for-TV feel, entertaining but ultimately forgettable. I was far more impressed with Mo Hayder’s The Devil of Nanking. Pig Island, by Mo Hayder Still under the influence of The Devil of Nanking, I went […]
I can’t tell you how many times friends have declared, apparently believing what they’re saying, that the times are worse than ever: the kids more insolent, the wars more horrific, the price of goods never higher, the future never more uncertain. My response has always been to ask if they’d like to trade lives with, […]
I felt the need to ride this morning, so I pointed the Goldwing toward Bisbee, Arizona, an old mining town 95 miles southeast of Tucson, down near the Mexican border. No sooner did I put the kickstand down in front of the Bisbee Coffee Co. than a friend walked up, Donna from Phoenix. She was […]
Sunday morning Donna and I went on a bash, a bicycle trail put on by a club we belong to. The bash started and ended at a friend’s house in NW Tucson, and after it was over we had a barbecue on his patio. As we were talking and grilling there was a huge POW!, […]
Digby, writing at Hullabaloo today about the anti-health care crowds that have been mobbing town hall meetings recently: This point is one that continues to amaze me. These people are coming unhinged over expanding access to health care. It’s not about taking away guns or mandating abortion or outlawing churches or some other issue about […]
Earlier this week, I listened to a National Public Radio report by correspondent Jerome Socolovsky on the discovery of early hominid fossils in Spain. According to Socolovsky’s report, the first fossil discovered at the site, a cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca hills north of Madrid, was a “1.2 million-year-old jawbone fragment from a species […]
I woke up possessed by the urge to ride, so I gassed up the Wing and headed to the top of Mt. Lemon, only a few miles from my home in NE Tucson, and blessedly, always 25-30° cooler. The road to the top winds and curves for 26 miles, and today for some reason I […]
My personal thoughts on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates? You probably think I’m about to say I agree with President Obama that the Cambridge police acted stupidly. No, actually, I think they acted predictably. Racism is a given in situations like this. Whites know it; people of color know it . . . if […]