Wrong-Way Germophobes

Once upon a time, an aviator named Douglas Corrigan set out to fly from New York back to Long Beach, California — and somehow instead landed in Ireland, earning the sobriquet “Wrong Way Corrigan.” Well, these days he seems to have plenty of company. Sunday morning at breakfast my friend Pete, a biologist, said that […]

My Sediments Exactly

The plumber is here and I am helping by sitting clear up out of the way. Actually, the plumber is here when he’s not somewhere else, so as a productive exercise we’re not getting far fast. Avery arrived on time, but wasn’t in the crawl space very long before he emerged and announced he’d brought […]

Celebrity Cons

This morning I am considering celebrities and how so many of us seem to lose our sensibility around them — and sadly, I have to include myself in this consideration. Nowadays, if some celebrity by chance were to wander into Pat’s Screen Printing — [It could happen: once upon a very long time ago, actor […]

Welcome to My World

Yesterday, in a day that was focused and busy and didn’t offer a lot of room for blogging, I ran across my friend Paul, whose birthday happened last week without acknowledgement from me. Until yesterday — better late than never, I hope. It took a minute to recognize him, because he wasn’t wearing glasses, which […]

Movie Romance

It’s Valentine’s Day, which I wasn’t really giving any thought to, it not being one of the Major Holidays on my personal calendar, but now CBS has got me thinking. As part of their feature on Valentine’s Day (the kick-off: don’t send money to someone you’ve only met on-line, followed by notice of an auction […]

All in the Family

The City of Gunnison got its start in the 1870s when a bunch of naive — really naive — white people thought it would be a great place to found an agrarian colony. With a growing season of less than 60 days, this turned out not to be such a good idea, but Gunnison was […]

A New Skill?

Oops: wrote this, then never posted it. I’m sure it’s worth the extra wait! “Skilsaw” is a brand, around since 1924, I just learned, when the company created the first portable saw, complete with “worm drive gearing,” whatever that might be. But last night I learned why it’s called a “skill saw” — it’s because […]

Cool Cats

It started, as everything involving the internet does, with cats. Kara was apprising me of possible absences from work when she said, matter-of-factly, that she might miss a day due to Cat Fest. “What?” I asked, sure that I had heard her wrong. No, that’s what she said: Cat Fest. I finally said, “I have […]

The Unfoodie

The other day I mentioned Svea, a woman I’ve known since we were both young, and that got me thinking about the one time during childhood I was invited to her house for dinner. Her mother was — presumably still is — a gourmet cook. This is what I mean by gourmet: Svea and I […]

Gaining Traction

When I was growing up, my family had cars, regular ol’ automobiles, every last one of them propelled by rear-wheel drive. As a teenager, I learned some of this from my dad, but also by checking books out of the library, so I feel fairly authoritative when I tell you this means that while the […]