Fixing The Election … Process (Part 2)

In my previous post, I offered five ways to fix our election process that will probably never happen because they depend on Congress taking positive action. Today I’m writing about something that we can all do, individually, to make our elections better. As a decidedly amateur photographer, I know that the easiest thing in the world...

Fixing The Election … Process

Ever since I fixed baseball a few years back, the public has been clamoring for me to fix our political system. Well, I’m not sure I can fix everything, but we can start with the process of running elections. Here are my top five recommendations, to start: 1) Dump the electoral college. This one...

A Few More Santa Fe Pictures

The church above is the San Miguel Mission, the oldest church structure in the United States. The original adobe walls and altar were built around 1610, and although it was partially destroyed several times during its existence, those walls still stand. There are more beautiful churches in Santa Fe, but none shine under that...

Kasha-Katuwe

With just three days left in his term, the first President Clinton declared seven new “National Monuments” by executive order, setting aside large areas of environmentally sensitive land and ensuring that they would  receive federal protection from commercial development. (The move wasn’t popular with some western politicians, who didn’t want to see their states’...

A 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

I saw a link today to an amazing Washington Post story that I missed when it was published five years ago: two Air Force pilots who scrambled on the morning of 9/11 in an effort to intercept the fourth hijacked airliner, in what was basically going to be a suicide mission. Over the years,...

Compton Hill Water Tower

Near the intersection of Grand Avenue and Highway 44 in St. Louis stands the Compton Hill Water Tower, built in the 1890s to improve water delivery to city residents. The “guts” of the tower is actually a 140-foot-tall, six-foot-diameter standpipe. The city found that somewhat unsightly, so the brick and limestone tower was built...

I’d Like A Different “Like”

Facebook recently added some new ways to “like” your friends’ posts. Now, instead of a simple like or share on a post, you can also “love” it, you can laugh at it, you can be angry or sad about it, or you can say “wow!” The problem with all if them, though, is Facebook...

seagulls

Seagulls And Sunrises

This land belongs to the gullsAnd the gulls to their cryAnd their cry to the windAnd their cry to the wind—David Gray   Michigan City. It’s a town of about 30,000 people, nestled in the northwest corner of Indiana, across the bottom of Lake Michigan from Chicago. My family has vacationed there for upwards...

The Game After The Storm

It was 10 years ago tonight—July 19, 2006—that I had the best seats I’ve ever had for a baseball game, and it was one of the wildest nights I’ve spent at the ballpark. My brother, who at that time worked for Anheuser Busch, which at that time was one of the better employers in St. Louis,...