Out of the Hickenlooper

Here is the sort of gross generalization I used to lecture college students against using in their writing: everyone loves free stuff. In this case, however, since it’s me and not my students, it’s a truism: people love getting things for free. Perhaps not everyone, but almost everyone. Lots. Lots of people like getting stuff […]

At Long Last, Summer

The news is not all bad today, for a change. Unemployment numbers were not nearly as bad as experts were expecting, assistance for small businesses is likely to be lengthened, and while it sounds depressing it’s not as Gunnison County is feeling blue. Every Thursday, CBS breaks into its own morning newscast with a “special […]

Moral Compass

I suppose we can regard today’s post as political in nature, but I don’t think it is: it’s instead a bewilderment about how one morally reprehensible person has so thoroughly managed to co-opt a political party that used to refer to itself as “Grand.” This is hardly a new wonderment, nor is it mine alone, […]

Gunnison Speaks

They kept coming. Not in ones and twos, but groups. Six here, a dozen there. People, many of them in masks, most of them with signs, streaming quietly past the windows at Pat’s, on their way to the corner at the other end of the block. A protest in George Floyd’s name, here in Gunnison. […]

Porcho Myarda

This could be the Year of Cancellation. We might want to completely forget this annum of 20/20 vision, where we learn all kinds of ugly things, but for many people, this is the Year That Could Have Been. Senior sports seasons. Olympics. Proms. Graduations. Trips abroad. Vacations. Weddings. All these and more have been altered, […]

Unmasked

Most superheroes have escaped my radar, although my mother may still have in her possession an “essay” I wrote around age 6 that declares my affinity for the campy TV show Batman “because they fight all the time.” But most superhero TV shows went unwatched by me. I didn’t buy their comic books; and other […]

What’s in a Name?

All right, I’ve put this off long enough: it is time, and timely, to talk about . . . Elon Musk. I did this once before, when he was talking up tunnels under metropolitan areas, the purpose being to increase driving surface, although why a guy who owns rockets wouldn’t push for flying cars I […]

A Part of Apartness

This morning I found a typo while reading, which by itself is hardly unusual (believe it or not, some can even been found within the confines of this blog), but this one stuck out for the diametric opposition offered by a single space. I believe I was on the intellectual hunt for the reason why […]

Ugly American

There are so many aspects of the killing of George Floyd and its increasingly violent aftermath that it’s difficult to know where, and whether, to begin. Here I sit, a child of extreme white privilege, in an area populated by a large percentage of people just like me, and I’m not sure it’s a good […]

Just Typical

We got our property valuation notice awhile back, and I got around to looking at it the other day. This is our first paper from the assessor’s office with a complete house on our lot. I don’t know if last year’s notice factored a house-in-progress, but if it was just for the land we seem […]