“In what was supposed to be kind of a long run, I had to crank it up to basically 5K race pace during the guitar solos on the YaYa’s version of Sympathy for the Devil.” This sentence appeared in my post earlier today. And I realize that for some readers, it might not have...
The Y In The Sky
The Post-Dispatch asks: Where were you when the Challenger exploded? I was in a job interview with the editor of the Clayton/West Citizen Journals. (“Do you mind if I smoke?” the editor asked at the beginning of the interview. “It’s your office,” I replied somewhat awkwardly. Am I going to say “yes, I mind,”...
Forecast: Snow, Ice, Slush, Snow, Slush…
Six inches of snow, followed by several days of temperatures in the teens or 20s. Rinse. Repeat. That’s January in St. Louis so far. Or at least the last couple of weeks. And although the driving portions of the roads have been cleared nicely, the edges of the roads and the sidewalks have been...
My Likes Are My Own, Thanks
I was cruising Facebook today, and there, over on the right side in the “ads” section, was something new: it was a picture of one of my FB “friends” (whose name I am editing out here, to protect the innocent), with the message, “XXX Likes Malaria No More.” Now, there’s an awful lot wrong...
Countdown To Zero
So Keith Olberman and MSNBC have parted ways. No word yet on what he’ll do next, but he’s obviously an eloquent, talented and passionate guy, and he’ll undoubtedly wind up with a good gig somewhere. Heck, maybe even back at ESPN, though I doubt it. The thing is, the three minutes and 12 seconds...
Refreshing My Music
At the beginning of this week, I trashed my entire iTunes music library on my computer at work. It consisted of 4,077 songs, which, if played consecutively, would go on for 13 days, three minutes and 20 seconds, according to the application’s statistics. Over the last couple of years I’ve imported a number of...
On Editing
From The Missouri Review today, this blog post on the importance of grammar. An excerpt: Over the holidays, I received the page proofs of my forthcoming collection. It was my last chance to read the book and catch any errors before publication. By this point, the stories had been revised and revised again. Many had...
The Shooter
I didn’t expect to be defending Sarah Palin, but here goes. It wasn’t long after Saturday’s shooting in Tucson, Ariz., before speculation started flying that the shooter was motivated by hatred of liberals, Democrats and the government in general, and possibly fed by the over-the-top and sometimes violent rhetoric we have heard all too...
College Football Champs
Yesterday was January 1, and we now have a new NCAA Division I football champion. Congratulations to the ________ of ________ University, who persevered through a grueling playoff run against top teams in each round, and then dominated _________ in the final game to win the well-deserved championship trophy. Oh wait, that’s not the...
Pictures Of 2010
Here, in chronological order, are a few of my favorite images from my camera in 2010. You might have seen a couple of them in Shoulblog or Facebook,, but most are published here for the first time. As always, click on the thumbnails for a larger view. We had a snowstorm early in January,...