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Monthly Archives: September 2006

Baseball Takes a Walk

Thursday, September 14, 2006

The multipart sale-tax increase passed in Fayetteville on Tuesday. Those who love to taunt the city doubtless will mock the smaller percentage approving the bit for continued construction of trails, as compared to the 3-to-1 majorities for the sewage treatment and road improvements. Specifically, according to the NWA Times (and here) and The Morning News [...]

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Blades, Rakes – Tools or Fools

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

In Sunday’s newspaper the columnist for the gubmint’s Master Gardener program (slogan: “No vegetable problem than can’t be solved with a chemical spray”) answers this question: Why are there so many mushrooms on lawns around town?” While the nice lady explains about fungus in three quick sentences, she senses that the reader surely does not [...]

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Max Low for Depot, Lowe?

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Let us now praise The Home Depot. It has won my heart for the next spell, by its stock, its helpful clerks, its new auto-checkout stands and not least, a consistent lack of crazy drivers in its parking lot. Yes, this is a prize that alternates with Loew’s. Every year or so, I am forced [...]

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Picture postcard

Monday, September 11, 2006

Everybody has something to say about today, and what happened five years ago, today. Where is the numerology for the ninth month and eleventh day? Or the date of the first Trade Center attack. Or the hit on the USS Cole. Or the attack in Madrid. The one on London buses and subways. What would [...]

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It was a Tuesday

Sunday, September 10, 2006

On an infamous morning like 9/11, the one five years ago, you don’t know what terror the afternoon will see. Evening finally came, and whether or not you had constant access to television during the day, you sure kept your eyes on the tube that night. To make sense of it? Yes, but more, so [...]

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Index finger index

Thursday, September 7, 2006

I am reading the new biography ‘All Governments Lie’: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone by Myra MacPherson. Mr. Stone worked for a few years at the famous experimental New York newspaper P.M. Reading again about the trendsetting daily of the late 1940s and early 1950s was coincident given the news [...]

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Organic boilerplate

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Newspaper supplements as a rule have disclaimers in them. Sure they’re small type, but they are there. They basically give the dates of the sale, that rainchecks are offered if an advertised item gets depleted and that the prices are exactly as posted. Ozark Natural Foods, my favorite grocery store, has up and run a [...]

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Boo hoo

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Why having an ombudsman seems to be a publication’s cop-out: From Romenesko: “Atlanta Journal-Constitution reader Carolyn Worthy fears 12-year-old ballplayer Josh Lester will be scarred for life as a result of the paper’s decision to picture him crying after his team lost a Little League World Series game. Ombud Angela Tuck writes: ‘Had a similar [...]

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No Pox on This Tax

Sunday, September 3, 2006

A pox of this tax, or a tax of this pox, (twist of Falstaff’s line of Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, part 2) We should, as these editorials all attest, vote “yes” to all four of Fayetteville’s tiny tax increases. Northwest Arkansas Times, and the Demzette. Should the Morning News publish a [...]

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