"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Fighting for hearts and minds
I haven’t opened Windows since I got my iMac … no, seriously, I meant to write about actual windows, the kind you open to air out the house when the weather is nice. After months of running it full time, day and night, it’s a treat to turn off the air conditioning. We can feel the house […]
Donna and I wake up around six. Our bed is situated so that the first thing we see is the sun coming up through the sliding glass patio door in our bedroom wall. I jumped out of bed a few mornings ago, put on a bathrobe, and went out through the patio door to take photos. […]
I don’t know how long outdoor grills are supposed to last, but we’ve retired one charcoal kettle grill and one gas grill since moving into this house in 1998, and are some years into our second set. The charcoal grill, a Weber, is holding up well, but the gas grill, also a Weber, is giving up the […]
Ugh, relatives in the heartland. Again. I unfriend out & out racists when they reveal themselves on Facebook, unless they’re kin (I did unfriend a nephew, but it was over animal cruelty). In the wake of Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson and the protests that followed, some of my relatives have started sharing white supremacist chain letters and […]
During our drive to New Mexico last week we had to stop at two US Border Patrol checkpoints, one on the White Sands Missile Range inbound to Alamogordo, the other homebound on I-10 between Las Cruces and Deming. We were racially profiled at the first one, which is to say the BP agent glanced at us […]
Whenever black Americans take to the streets over police brutality and killings, racist email forwards follow. Over the past week I’ve gotten two, both claiming the media ignores black on white crime out of political correctness. What world do these people live in? Since when has the press ignored black on white crime? I think […]
Sure, making fat cry is a laudable thing, but no one wants your sweaty fat teardrops on the equipment at the gym, and that’s why they have those handy wipe dispensers on the walls. Some guy wasn’t wiping down the machines after sweating on them at Anytime Fitness this morning, and it fell to me to be […]
I needed reassurance that the Bundy Ranch and Murrieta types are a marginal minority, and Rachel Maddow gave it to me.