"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Remember our aroused aloe? A month ago, when I first noticed it, it had grown a spike three to four feet tall. Two days later it was over six feet. Today it’s about twenty feet high, and it’s started to bloom. Such a mass of yellow flowers, with prominent pistils and stamens, I have never […]
Man, they are flat on it! Yesterday, when I picked up the project bike, I told my friend I’d help her sell two older bikes her late husband had in storage, his homebuilt racing bike and a mid- to late-60s Ducati single he was planning to restore. She doesn’t have an internet connection, so I […]
I always thought I’d have a project bike some day. In my daydreams, I’d see a Triumph or BSA 650 twin, perhaps a pre-1965 BMW with Earles forks, maybe even an old Sporty. One thing I never pictured, though, was an Italian bike, and a relatively new one at that! My long-awaited project bike turned […]
On April 13th, during a practice flight before a weekend air show, a member of the Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team went supersonic over Tucson. The sonic boom frightened people and broke a lot of windows. Going supersonic over populated areas is a huge USAF “be no” (as in “there shall be no …”) and I […]
“I don’t need an invitation if there’s no house.” — Colin Farrell as Jerry Dandridge in Fright Night Hugo (2011, USA) I read a few harsh reviews of this movie and even saw some Facebook and Twitter posts putting it down, and I don’t get it. Hugo is terrific, one of the best family films […]
After my post about the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, I asked some friends if they wanted me to blog about any aircraft in particular. My niece Rebecca voted for a floatplane, I imagine because she lives in Seattle and sees them all the time … also, of course, floatplanes being so cool. It happens that […]
Nothing much to say today, so I’ll post four photos instead. Wednesday at the air museum I photographed some aircraft awaiting restoration. It wasn’t till later, downloading the photos, that I realized all three aircraft were British. In the top left photo, sitting in front of the museum’s restoration hangar, are a Hawker Hunter (in […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books. Arizona: When I began following the Tucson Unified School District book banning story, I found one of the most interesting sources of behind-the-scenes reporting, both within TUSD classrooms and on its governing board, to be David Morales’ Three Sonorans Blog, […]