"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
I was looking through iPhone photos in a break room at Pima Air & Space Museum, inside a metal-walled building that blocks cell phone reception, and realized I’d have to wait to post them until I got home. Since I couldn’t go online and catch up with my little Facebook friends either, I started looking through […]
We were to have a full house for Thanksgiving, so we started cleaning the dining and living room for company. By “we” I mean Donna, but I’m helping with furniture, moving it around while she tackles different sections of carpet with a shampooer. By “were” I mean Donna’s sister Georgianna and her husband Don have […]
My niece Rebecca takes National Novel Writing Month seriously. I think the world of her, so I’m taking it seriously too. She sent a Google Doc link to her work in progress. I reciprocated with a link to mine, a chapter of a planned memoir. I was happy with it when I finished it a couple of months ago, but am less […]
My sister Susan was born on the 4th of April, 1948, a year and a half after I came into the world. That’s us playing in the front yard of our grandparents’ home in Jackson, Missouri, some time in the early 1950s. That old photo illustrates our relationship as children: although we lived together, sometimes […]
There are a few small car shows in town during the hot months, but the big three in southern Arizona happen between October and February. The season kicked off yesterday with the annual Tucson Classics Car Show at the Gregory School. Next up: the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction in Scottsdale and the Collector Car Show on the golf course […]
“It wasn’t for trash, my bookshelves would be mostly empty.” —Paul Woodford, unpublished memoir The Great Passage by Shion Miura Clearly, I’ve been reading too many mysteries and thrillers, where every new object or action introduced into the story comes back later in some significant way. In real life … and Japanese novels … the […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Many schools and school districts in the United States have adopted procedures to follow when parents or community members demand the removal of books from classrooms, school libraries, and reading lists. Challenged books are reviewed by committees, which recommend retention, removal, […]
This is our newest family member, Mr. B, riding home with us yesterday. Mr. B is a 9-year-old brindle dachshund. We think he’s a standard, somewhat on the smallish side but in any case considerably taller and longer than our mini, Maxie. We were gutted when Schatzi died, but after a while started thinking about […]