My dog Lucy is frantic for light beams. Shadows, too. In the morning, she patrols the sunlight-splayed kitchen, watching for reflections from a wrist watch, or from a juice glass exiting the cupboard. She will skid across the tiles in pursuit when the refrigerator door handle flings a reflection across the floor. It used to…
DetailsTime Magazine’s nod to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most deliciously odd “Person of the Year” choices in its history. Not because Zuckerberg isn’t consequential. As one whose network links 550 million people, he is consequential beyond imagining. What’s so odd about the choice is that he seems like a…
DetailsIf this doesn’t toast your heart’s cockles: The congressman said we couldn’t afford to extend unemployment benefits through what in economic terms is one of America’s harshest winters. At the same time we could afford, he said, to extend tax breaks worth billions of dollars to America’s wealthiest. For them, “harsh winter” means…
DetailsThe 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…
Details