A Windmill Falls

It turns out, sometimes you can tilt at a windmill and win — or at least gain a temporary reprieve. I just heard yesterday that Western Not State’s board of trustees has decided to continue music as a major at the college, I mean university. This is a text from the friend of a friend, […]

Charging Ahead, Smartly

As most of you probably know, my car is electric. Not electric as in “exciting,” particularly — it’s a rather ordinary sedan, which is not anything I’ve ever sought out in a car — but electric as in that’s how it’s powered. I didn’t specifically set out to own an electric car, although as a […]

Separate, Not Even Equal

The first piece of writing I got published in actual print was a letter to the editor of the Denver Post, when I was 15. It was in response to a sports columnist whose name I remember but the jerk isn’t worth mentioning, who had written an idiotic column proudly bragging how he had taken […]

(Endless) Season of Mud

Once again, a forecast of snow ended in the tiniest whiff of white stuff, so I’m not buying it as the Denver forecaster shows a map with moisture clear across the Western Slope for today. But, given the pattern we’ve been living in this entire year (nearly a quarter done already), there will be enough […]

Thoughts, if Not Prayers

NRA Victory in Colorado: ICYMI: A Colorado judge gave law-abiding gun owners something to celebrate. In an @NRAILA-supported case, he ruled that the city of Boulder’s ban on commonly-owned rifles (AR-15s) and 10+ round mags was preempted by state law and STRUCK THEM DOWN. –March 16 tweet from the National Rifle Association Active shooter at […]

Still Here

I’m still here, despite the way it has seemed the last few days. Mostly I haven’t had the fortitude to attempt to take on WordPress, which is supposed to be about pressing words but which keeps innovating its way right of out blog-friendly options. I did lose a key paragraph while trying to make my […]

V Day

Oh, WordPress bane of my existence: who knows what they did today that felt like an “improvement” to them. but I have spent the day — in between extensive naps and fatigue — trying to format what I wrote this morning. I’m not proofreading, or trying anything else. I apologize on behalf of the “innovators” […]

Little Bird

His dad called him Pablo; the rest of us just called him Paul. He was probably in the neighborhood of seven when I first met him and his family. New to town, they were frequent customers of the bookstore where I worked. Then his mom got a job at the bookstore, and in the way […]

Rescuing Daylight

As I awoke at what a mere two days ago would have been a completely unreasonable 4:20 rather than this morning’s more acceptable (but still early) 5:20, after staying up “late” because it felt “normal,” I would like to lodge yet another complaint about this nonsense of time shifting. The Washington Post tells me there […]

All We Need is Music, Music, Music

The music department at Western Not State Not College is shouldering the brunt of proposed cuts to the liberal arts curriculum, although there are efforts to make sure this doesn’t happen without a fight. Like the fight song for the college, I mean university, which last I knew still got played (in non-covid years) by […]