Winter of Discontent

The other day, for the first time in my 58 years, I looked at a denuded tree and thought, “It’s going to look like that for months.” The thought depressed me, which was another first — I’ve never minded winter before. To be perfectly correct, I did kind of mind one winter in my youth. […]

Maskless Wonders

A public health board met recently in Idaho to hear from a public health epidemiologist that the hospital in Coeur d’Alene is essentially overrun with covid patients. Room capacities have been doubled; new beds have been purchased, and everything is full as staff is short-handed and the doctors are worn out. Additional doctors testified about […]

A Crappy Philosophy

When you watch a lot of SpongeBob, you also find yourself watching a lot of commercials aimed at kids, and it has irritated me for decades just how gender segregated the commercials are. Commercials for “boy” things show humans who are do-ers: action-oriented, things to build, take apart, throw, catch, very hands-on. The girl commercials […]

Rejected, Dejected

Bike races often start with a “neutral zone” — yes, just like the Federation and Romulans in Star Trek — a few kilometers where the peloton rolls out gradually, sort of a parade through the starting town. It’s a neutral place where nothing of note generally happens. Except in this year’s Giro d’Italia, when in […]

My Beef: It’s What’s For Dinner

Right on the heels of my screed against billionaire tax cheats (and wanna-be billionaires who are politicians who also cheat the country they claim to serve out of tax dollars), I figuratively picked up my Washington Post, only to read this headline: “Federal judge strikes down plan to slash food stamps for 700,000 unemployed Americans.” […]

In Excess

Let’s start with the concept of $1 billion. As my friend Matt likes to note, it’s 1,000 stacks of 1 million. One million doesn’t seem to go as far as it used to: within the city limits of Gunnison you could buy two five-bedroom houses and put two mid-grade pick-ups in the driveway. In Crested […]

Body Parts

Apparently one has to be in the write (yes, that’s on purpose) frame of mind to blog, or maybe it’s the heart that has to be in it, but whatever organ it is, it just hasn’t been there for me this week. And now I have let this go until beyond the last minute, so […]

RIP, Mrs. McCain

I have to say, I don’t know that I ever gave Roberta McCain a thought while she lived, but now that she has died, she seems to have been a rather extraordinary person. One of those people we can never really be like but wish we could. Mrs. McCain, wife, daughter-in-law, mother and grandmother of […]

Prime Hypocrisy

I was going to start with the ironic, but somehow I think it is less that, and just hypocrisy. As my family was texting this morning, I was watching what’s left of my bike race. Multiple riders and staff tested positive on yesterday’s rest break; today two entire teams are gone from the race. But […]

Tool Time

Post-neighborhood inspection, pre-doing anything productive yesterday, I sat down in a chair and Na Ki’o immediately joined me. This is a condition known as feline paralysis, whereby you are stuck in your chair because you don’t dare disturb the cat, so there I sat, contemplating my options. The most obvious option, since it was feeling […]