Oahu, Hawaii – Public officials on this island paradise fret coqui frogs and the pretty girls who primp along the road at the public botanical garden at Kaneohe. Photography is prohibited on the garden road and right in front of us a blonde plops down in the middle of it, spreading her colorful skirt out across the asphalt while a girlfriend…
It’s a sad day for anyone west of the Mississippi. Larry McMurtry, the great voice of western Americana, is dead of Parkinson’s disease at age 84. A career novelist, screenwriter, critic, bookseller and book scout, McMurtry created Gus McRae, Duane Moore and Hud Hannon, outsized characters who leapt from his books to movie screens in the late 20th century. His…
I bumped into Sarah Palin yesterday while streaming Randy Rainbow videos on YouTube. There she was, our former governor, on an Internet infomercial advertising the services of some investment counselor. Using her Alaska credit card, Sarah was comparing investing in the stock market to hiking in the wilderness, pleading with viewers that they might get mauled on Wall Street without…
A friend asked the other day whether American soldiers were still dying in Afghanistan. Shamefully, I didn’t know. The responsibility of citizens in a democracy is to keep up on issues and participate in decision-making and there’s no government function more important than deciding to kill people, our people or ones from elsewhere. So why didn’t I know? Because I…
If I hadn’t met Dick Carlson in person, he would have had to come to me from the pages of a novel. He was close to 70 when I knew him, with a shock of unruly silver hair, eyes like sapphires and a rocking gait from a lifetime working on uneven terrain. Leather boots, a flannel shirt, jeans and suspenders…
At a party a few years back I got into a disagreement with a rich man about the meaning of the American Dream. The man, who had earned his fortune honestly, said he’d achieved the American Dream by becoming wealthy. I told him that he needn’t have gotten rich, as the dream isn’t so much about riches as it was…
I was talking to my Republican friend on Friday’s ferry to Haines. Out the window, seagulls were clamoring above Lynn Canal. A week of north winds had churned up to the surface the big-eyed lampfish and maybe some other bottom-dwellers. The gulls were getting them while the getting was good. My friend was sitting at a cafeteria table alone, looking…
Joe Biden is promising to unify the country and certainly that needs doing. All Joe has to do is rebuild the middle class. Unity problem solved. No kidding. I know this because I grew up in a unified, lower-middle class neighborhood in the 1960s, and this is how it worked: All the guys on our street had jobs. They were…
The good Republican boys and girls in Congress are saying that maybe President Trump should be sent to his time-out room at Mar-A-Lago or maybe even be put on double-secret probation. Whoop. Dee. Doo. The mad president orchestrated – or, at the very least incited – a violent and fatal attack on the leadership of the United States government. That’s…
Hundreds of baboons stormed the U.S. Capitol building yesterday, attempting to seize control of the government, and they got off light. A few died, but had they been black, scores would be dead today. Don’t tell me, gentle reader, to not make this issue about race. It couldn’t be more about race. Race has been the issue all along for…