For the past year, I’ve had an ongoing, mostly text-based conversation with a 40-something relative on the opposite side of the political aisle. I do this for many reasons, the most important of which is that I remember his tiny hand in mine during a walk around his neighborhood when he was 3. We’d seen …
Photos only way toward action on gun safety
When I was about 10 years old, my uncle, drunk and distressed — as most of my male relatives were in those days — put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He was found by his two pre-teen children, blood and brains all over the room. Naturally, they were never the same. …
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If you’re pro-life, you need to divorce the GOP
It's not often I write a column I think is nearly a home run, but today's column in the Arizona Daily Star is pretty darn close. It took hours of work and, honestly, I'm not sure I can write columns much longer. I've been doing some version of this type of work for 30 years, …
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Feel trapped by 24-7 grind of parenting? Know there is another way.
In case you’ve missed it, there’s a new-old show being pushed on Netflix called Old Enough! The episodes can be nerve-wracking because – well, look at that photo! That tiny guy is sent off to cross traffic with nothing more than a yellow flag to get cars to stop. They do stop, which is probably …
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The Rest of the Story (updated)
My column in Sunday's Arizona Daily Star on ending masking for children had to be cut by many inches. Below is the entire column with the things that had to be cut highlighted in bold italic. The National Public Radio announcer read the report with appropriate concern, emphasizing the final three words: A Bronx apartment …
Teachers save lives – let them keep doing it.
Sometimes, you read the news and you just have to yell into your empty kitchen, “Have we lost our minds?” This was my reaction midweek reading Howard Fischer’s story on House Bill 2161, which an esteemed panel at the Arizona State Legislature approved this week. If it becomes law, it will punish teachers for doing …
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Yes, 2021 sucked. And, there was progress.
It was easy to get discouraged in 2021 after getting this close to seeing a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, but who wants to always be depressed? Not me, Mister. So, I'm coming into 2022 with my optimistic dukes up, determined to make a difference in climate policy if nothing else, inspired …
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Give the gift of vaccination
I caught a cold after Thanksgiving. Twenty-one family members had gathered, mostly outside, and two small children brought runny noses with them. Little stinkers 🙂 Naturally, we thought it might be COVID-19 because, as a friend recently said, “Will there ever again be a time we think any illness isn’t COVID?” Probably not. So out …
Is it really as simple as eating less?
Since I've been writing about Covid for nearly a year now in my Arizona Daily Star columns, I've received dozens of emails from anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and even people who think Covid is a hoax. Thankfully, those latter are few and far between. Through these emails I've learned a number of things, including the negative cost …
Natural immunity should count for something
In case you haven’t noticed, people are dog tired of #pandemiclife. It was one thing to be locked down for a few months in March of 2020, a communal effort to save the elderly and protect hospitals from implosion. The vast majority of people took the sacrifice in stride. But we just passed the 18-month …
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Renee Wrote This 