Recent Columns

I belong to a club I never asked to join. It’s an organization that doesn’t discriminate between race, age, religion or any personal preferences. It’s members are many. This club spans the globe — from huge metropolitan areas to the most remote areas of Third World countries — yet no meetings are ever held.

Bill Jenkins spent most of his life in a gymnasium or on a football field. It was only fitting his friends paid their final respects to him there.

I really enjoy it when people write or call in with stories of their sons or daughters going out with Dad or Gramps or Uncle Seymour to hunt, fish or just enjoy the outdoors. This time it was double duty because Bill and Faith Carlson have twin grandsons, and they both have harvested 8-point bucks this fall. Cody and Garrett Fues are both sophomores at Putnam County High School and enjoy the sport of archery.

I had the opportunity recently to work on a journal for one of my communication classes at NAU. The class is called Media, Race and Gender, and the assignment was to analyze different aspects of mass media and determine how it discriminates against people of a different creed or culture. The results of my analysis rendered me a wealth of information, but much of that knowledge was connected at the hip to assumptions that I’ve had since the moment I was first able to calculate my social surroundings with reasonable proficiency.

I’ve never been very much like my friends. And I mean never because I was different at only 4 years old! I love it. Some people call it weird; I call it different. So this article is about each year of my life, and what I did that was different from what other kids did.

This week I’m going to do some dessert recipes in case you’re looking for a new recipe instead of the traditional pumpkin pie. I’m all for the pumpkin pie though.

Some days all you can hope for are the small moments, the small victories.

After Jay Cutler’s game-ending interception last Thursday, (his fifth of the evening for those keeping score at home), I scurried from the residence of one of my football friends like a rat abandoning a sinking ship.

When I think of a brick wall, I conjure up a picture in my head of a solid structure that is unable to be penetrated by anyone. Unlike walls made of wood or other less sturdy materials, a brick wall is staunch, secure and unable to be scaled by anyone who the builder of the wall deems inappropriate.

All these appointed governmental “czars” that have been foisted upon us in recent months — many of them apparent bottom feeders according to their resumes and past and present associations — are nothing new to me as I had my first dust-up with assigned authority run a muck way back when I was single digits in age.