Some (Bad) Words About the Weather

Well, we’re firmly in June and it is 2020, so of course it snowed overnight. I believe it also snowed in June last year, but that was the Year of No Spring, when it snowed all the way through May into June. This year we’ve already had some days of high heat, which might make […]

Stupid Is

Sometimes I feel so stupid wearing a mask. I already had a small box of them at home, purchased from a grocery store at some previous point when I was sick and not wanting to spread germs as I went places. Places where I got funny looks from everyone around me, all the people I […]

Booking It, Or Not

There are people in this world, of which I am not one, who set out to do things and do them right away. These are the achievers, the do-ers, maybe the get-rich-quick entrepreneurs. They are not the TL Livermores of the world. When I was a kid there was a man who lived, briefly, on […]

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 […]