Nine years ago, I was in Reims, France on a bicycle. I’d sat in a restaurant with a bottle of champagne and a plate of escargot until after dark, but I still wanted to glimpse the town’s famous cathedral, a giant and historic one where French kings were coronated for 1,000 years. The streets were empty and the cathedral closed,…
Because newspapers broker in ideas and also stir the political pot, they attract all manner of hell-raisers, free-thinkers, marginal literary types, crackpots, cranks, wits, half-wits, intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals, highballs and goofballs. And that’s just the reporting staff. Then there are the hangers-on, the sources, interlopers and news junkies who frequent newsrooms. They seem never to get enough of the drama and…
For a snapshot of our town’s culture, you can’t beat high school graduation. It’s arguably the town’s happiest night, marking at least partial completion if not outright success at the most important thing we do around here – raise and educate young people. How we choose to celebrate is constantly evolving, providing a reflection of who we are and what…
Oh, those Michiganders and their angry protest against the COVID-19 lockdown. I want to say to them, I’m with you. No, not like that. I’m not with their crazy conspiracy theories and their anti-government paranoia and their macaroni-and-cheese-fueled brain functioning. I’m with them to say, “Yes. You are humans, too. You are bat-shit crazy, but so is most of the…
His cringe-worthy press conferences during the corona crisis have underscored everything that’s wrong with the Trump presidency: His errors, his lies, his exaggerations, his unpreparedness, his unfocused, garbled, stream-of-consciousness meandering and his naked self-promotion. As some wag remarked, “He sounds like a kid giving a book report who didn’t read the book.” What makes it a spectacle is that while…
Pizza Joe was closing in on 30, way past the age of knowing better when he decided to jump the duck pond in his southern Ohio hometown of Cambridge. Perhaps, like so many guys who grew up riding spider bikes and watching daredevil Evel Knievel jump buses and cars and fountains on a motorcycle, Joe figured it would be fun.…
Remember back in October when we had a national debate over whether it was okay to “boo” Donald Trump when he showed up at the World Series? The hand-wringers and apologists said booing the president was “bad form” and that we needed to “respect the dignity of the office,” as though the office of president somehow exists separately from the…
I was at the front of a line of cars today here in suburban Philadelphia when the traffic light turned green, but there was no place for me to go. The lane I intended to turn into was backed up into the intersection where I sat. It was my first experience of gridlock – so many cars there is no…
We were walking up Tower Road, looking for friends with sleds. I am 58 years old and my companion is 62. I’ve been down south lately, I said to my friend, and I don’t think many 60-year-olds in my hometown are still out sledding. “Ah Haines,” he replied, “Where you can relive your childhood every day.” Indeed you can, and…
(A version of the below tribute was read at Skagway’s memorial celebration for the late Buckwheat Donahue, held Nov. 23, 2019. On the same evening, Lynn Canal Community Players in Haines dedicated the howl during its performance of “Lust for Dust” to Buckwheat, a passionate howler and generous supporter of KHNS and many local causes.) What kind of man drives…