The house I grew up in was built with two accessories we seldom used as intended – a dining room and a large, porcelain bathtub. So small by today’s standards that such homes aren’t even built anymore, our house had one bathroom, three tiny bedrooms, a stand-up kitchen and a living room just big enough for a modest sofa and…
I am missing John and Ray these days. I am missing them like the grandfathers I never knew, or like a crochety uncle I did know. I am missing their visits to the newspaper office, with letters-to-the-editor in hand, or with musings on some local issue, or with questions about a meeting they missed or with a private opinion they…
During a recent visit to my hometown, I awoke on Halloween disappointed to find no toilet paper draped from our trees and none of our car windows streaked with soap. Mischief Night apparently is dead. Many adults, I’m sure, are glad for its passing but their relief is mistaken. It’s a worrisome sign when so much of our younger generation…
What happens when a Trump supporter angers another Trump supporter? Nothing much. This herd is spooked, stampeding and losing numbers. No sense tripping up a fellow traveler. I witnessed the following spectacle Saturday afternoon at the public library in Media, Pa., and it says everything you need to know about Trump’s following. A crowd gathered in the library basement for…
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and said unto them, it is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of…
In a professional baseball game, the team that holds a lead of at least four runs after the sixth inning has more than a 95 percent chance of winning. The ruinous decline of standards in the United States is nowhere more evident than in the fact that I found the above statistic in a quick Internet search starting with the…
I missed the Southeast Alaska State Fair in Haines this year and had to settle for the big Alaska State Fair in Palmer, which offers junkier junk food, grown men in cowboy hats and a generous serving of Jesus in the form of booths offering ministry to the fallen. It’s a bit different than the Haines fair, which leans toward…
If you’re lucky, you haven’t had the chance to drive the new, smoother and wider section of Haines Highway. It’s no improvement. The road is smoother, and perhaps the lanes are a few inches wider, but the elevation of the roadway and the fact that it is hemmed in by guardrails for miles effectively has narrowed it, eliminating miles of…
A couple decades back, pundits and comedians made hay with the news that new hammers at hardware stores were coming with a written warning about their dangers. But the joke was on us. The Fear and Hazard Racket is now big business, with governments at the local, state and national level cashing in on this message: Be afraid. Be very…
Poking into a sand dune last week, looking for shells, my niece uncovered a shark’s tooth. “Watch for pieces of eight and gold doubloons,” I told her, repeating something my mom, a tireless beachcomber, would say while we ambled along the Jersey shore, scouring the surf’s edge. My niece and I were at Ocean City, N.J., one of the dozen…