Saw several campaign signs that had been blown over this afternoon. And I'm wondering. If the wind dies down before people get home from work in a few hours, will those with uprooted yard signs remember the weather? Or, like in every other situation, will…
A colleague who does not eat meat recently spent a few days in Kansas City. He decided that it would be crazy to visit that city and not have a plate of barbecue ribs. So that's what he did. And enjoyed his dinner. It was…
Boy, I sure wish I still had recordings of readers calling my phonemail and singing snippets of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and the old Hamm's beer jingle. If I were to invite readers to sing something else, what should it be? www.smithsonianmag.com
A friend was listening to oldies while driving the grandkids to day care. A 1968 song by The Foundations came on. Her radio has a readout that shows what song is playing but it has limited characters. So the tune displayed as "Build Me Up…
Even after all these years, I still occasionally get notes from readers expressing dismay about the fact that I seldom address the serious issues confronting society. So here's a question just for those folks. Have you ever forgotten that you ate beets and then, a…
It's always interesting to see how newspaper work is depicted in the movies and on TV. Take a 1962 episode of "Leave it to Beaver" titled "Long-Distance Call," for example. Beaver and two of his friends decide to call baseball pitcher Don Drysdale at Dodger…
Let's say you have a loosely agreed upon college football bet with some friends at work. If your team wins, which seldom happens, they purchase a bottle of some weird ass beer for you and deliver same on Monday. If their team wins, you buy…
The case for taking long walks: So this little boy stopped us on a Browne's Addition sidewalk. He held up a picture book about animals. We examined the volume and pronounced it a valuable reference work. Then we pointed to a photo of a striped…
Julie Jeppesen was in a Spokane Valley ice cream parlor when she heard an anxious mother call to a wandering little girl, "Come over here, we're not in Coeur d'Alene anymore."
Everybody knows about coming up with nicknames for neighbors you have never met. I have long assumed that virtually everyone does that. But do you also employ personalized place names in your family? I'll give you an example. It's about 10 streets away from our…