The red kettle beckons outside the store, and a sad tension grips me. Sad, because it used to be that whatever spare change rattled in my pocket would go into that kettle, drawing a cheery thanks and a smile. And who couldn’t stand some of that action? I forgo it, however. That’s…
DetailsI was told once that I strikingly resembled a Walrus. Not the marine mammal. Not the leader of the Beatles. I was, said an acquaintance, the spitting image of pro golfer Craig Stadler — known in his sport as the Walrus. I blinked and protested. Stadler is squat and chubby. Except for…
DetailsThe first Thanksgiving celebrated survival and agrarian guile. With the help of charitable natives, the pale-skinned aliens were able to exhale and rejoice, having made a life on and with foreign soil. So it is with my family this past year. We did much the same, survival-wise on alien land, even…
DetailsMy waning sense of incredulousness was gnawing on a TV commercial for a brand of artificial hip — you don’t just get those off the rack, so “ask your doctor” — when the news guy came on and told us about Black Friday. The story: Many will shop. All…
DetailsSnow blessed Colorado’s Front Range last week, roughly a month later than normal. This was not a surprise in what is shaking down as the warmest year on record. Even less surprising is the forecast: dry — not just in precipitation, but in any hope of Congress addressing the No. 1 issue facing…
DetailsMarva Beck told a reporter that her first priority as a new state representative is a tougher voter identification law. Really? Not, say, to help Texas schools address ever-accumulating and costly state mandates? Not to better serve the mentally ill? Not to dig the state out of its Texas-sized…
DetailsThis is for those in the “not a lick of difference” camp. Yes, you folks in the squishy, independent center, and you folks of the so easily disgusted left. This is also to you relatively progressive candidates who campaigned as if — yes, ’twas not a lick of difference. Yeah, boy, there’s a difference, and…
DetailsDukaki — n., pl.; (1) progressive politicians vaporized at the polls for campaigns in which they chose not to tell voters what they stand for; (2) Candidates who go out with no bang, only whimpers. We start this discussion with a fact: The stimulus bill worked. USA Today veritably screamed it in an editorial…
DetailsMy wife expressed alarm that the mute on the TV remote is being unresponsive, or at least slow on the draw. I suggested that the problem is simply structural fatigue. A mopey mute is a serious matter right now. Put in personal terms: Through Nov. 2, if viewing TV — baseball…
DetailsDENVER — Actually doing something about homelessness seems like the stuff of fifth-grade essays or beauty queens’ answers of 25 words or less. But it takes more than 25 words for Mike George to explain how he sank into the social chasm that nearly left him a corpse on the pavement. It took more than…
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