"No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.” — Lily Tomlin
My problem is I still think of the primetime MSNBC news shows … All In with Chris Hayes, the Rachel Maddow Show, the Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell … as news shows. Chris Hayes, I’ll give him this, covers a lot of news (his recent series on water use in the American Southwest was exceptionally good), but […]
There were stories in sweat. The sweat of a woman bent double in an onion field, working fourteen hours under the hot sun, was different from the sweat of a man as he approached a checkpoint in Mexico, praying to La Santa Muerte that the federales weren’t on the payroll of the enemies he was […]
One of the volunteers I work with at the Pima Air & Space Museum is a young University of Arizona aeronautical engineering student. His family is originally Vietnamese and I have the impression his father or maybe grandfather immigrated to the USA after the communist takeover. I’m sure there’s a fascinating story behind that, and I’ll have […]
I’m going to put a few freeway miles on the new truck this morning. The one-year-old but new-to-us truck, that is. The original tires didn’t have a lot of tread left so we had new ones put on. Before the new tires, the alignment seemed off: there was a very slight pull to the right. […]
The debate, from what I did absorb, consisted of buzzwords, predictable talking points, and appeals to the lowest common denominator.
A friend passed along a link to a New York Times opinion column on the discrepancy between our feelings about the killing of people and the killing of animals. One line jumped out at me: “Animals are not stained by original sin.”
I’m starting work on a memoir-like writing project, so posting here at Paul’s Thing (and on Facebook and Twitter) may become even more spotty and random than it already is. Just saying. In the meantime, a couple of domestic updates: The floor of the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink was rotted, so Donna and Polly ripped it out. […]
Keep that smart phone handy, peeps. Video every encounter you have with the police, and if you see someone else being roughed up by a cop, pull over and tape it. These taped encounters are making a difference. They’re going viral, popping up on the six o’clock news, and making people think.