Governing From the Hip

Our governor, here in Colorado. I voted for him; I don’t know if I’ll be doing that again. I suppose I probably will, but this time around it will likely be a vote against his eventual opponent rather than a vote for him. So far I am going to rate his pandemic response as: tepid. […]

Reading the Paper

I know; I have vanished for an unconscionable amount of time. I didn’t mean to, and I have multiple topics to cover, but every morning for the last four I have decided all those could wait. I have to confess, I kind of got stuck on last week’s local paper, which came out Thursday. I […]

As He Lay Dying

My uncle, in faraway Nebraska, is in hospice. This is my mother’s brother, the person everyone has compared me to back as far as I can remember: You’re so much like your Uncle Jerry. You remind me of Jerry. You and your uncle are so alike. That connection has been more or less lost these […]

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 […]

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 […]