I can’t not write about the murder of Cecil, the 13-year-old famously black-maned lion lured out of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park and shot by an American hunter, Dr. Walter James Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota. Yes–I meant murder. The shooting was the final act in this grisly drama, after Palmer first shot Cecil with a […]
My wife wanted me to write about the evils of artificial grass–astroturf–as a replacement for the real thing in this time of drought. Nah. But I will begin with something equally fake–the notion that the stars and bars represents Confederate culture and history, and is symbolic of the valor of that side’s soldiers. It seems […]
They say practice makes perfect. This isn’t necessarily so. In all my years as a practicing Catholic I was never a perfect one, and am now in a lapse that has lasted 35 years. To be clear, I’m not even a Christian anymore. But neither are those who ascribe natural or man-made phenomena to the […]
The Valley Voice is accused, occasionally, of not being balanced. As the editor, I receive many letters and emails on a wide range of topics. Let me show you what being unbalanced truly looks like verbatim: Kumbayah LGBT, please let us keep our freedoms of religion, speech, a ssociation and assembly. (Letter to the editor […]
Frustratingly, I remain the worst musician in the history of sound. Practice, which is supposed to make for Perfect, in my case only gives rise to noise. But what’s worse than maladroit fingering is my memory. It does not linger. I resume with my favorite guitar, a semi-hollow custom dual split-coil Telecaster, and can almost […]
I’m writing this on my birthday–the 52nd–and it feels the most portentous yet. Twenty-one bounced off, for instance, and turning 40 was meaningless. It is not that I dread a beckoning mortality, or even feel–in fact–that it is approaching. As I have said before, there have been days when death has seemed the attractive option. Neither is it the […]
The famous question, posed in song, asks, “What will we do with the drunken sailor?” Apparently, there are only four acceptable options: The crew could “shave his belly with a rusty razor”–which sounds distinctly unpleasant–or, much more agreeably, “put him in a longboat till he’s sober.” The sailor, presumably, would sleep it off there. But […]
Back when I was a kid, at about the time one first reads the likes of Hemingway, I became aware not of the Spanish Civil War–that was old hat–but the idea that foreigners would actually migrate to fight in it. I knew that Germany used the conflict as a proving ground, of sorts, for its […]
I am more than perturbed by the fact that vaccinations–which in my childhood were not only free, but compulsory, and conveniently administered at school–are now something of a political hot potato, particularly for those on the right. Don’t get me wrong. There are liberal enclaves where the vaccination rates are not as high as they […]
Let’s first stipulate that nobody needs Sarah Palin. Ever. She has made herself into one of the first class buffoons of our era–and she has every right to have done so. So–good for her! Congratulations! But this column is not about her, or what she can see from her house. Don’t think Sarah Palin; think, […]