Categories
News, Spin

With Luck, a Four-way

May I predict, with perverse pleasure, the coming split of both the Republican and Democratic parties. I am not referring to the politics as usual intra- and interparty squabbles. The GOP is as strong as ever, but it’s not without the occasional flare. Mid-month and again this week it was over the pronouncements of Sen. […]

Categories
Life Lessons

Ich ‘Ben’ ein Razorbacker

A few days ago, a fellow journalist asked me if I planned to grow a goatee for her skit in next month’s Northwest Arkansas Gridiron, the annual satirical sketch revue of the local SPJ. I asked the show’s coordinator, who reminded me that I should look clean-shaven for another skit. Yea, saved by a practical […]

Categories
UConn and More

Heartin’ Historic Hartford

For most summers, Brick has included reportage from the annual conferences of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. They were long, even when broken into several posts per weekend. Reporting this year’s, in Hartford, Conn., was tricky because I left my seat and note-taking repeatedly  when called away to troubleshoot. I know I know. Heavy […]

Categories
Body, Home, Street

Zapping Ethics

This is a retail dilemma, drafted as a timeline. In writing out the end, a wicked solution crystallizes, It would be wrong, but I want to. Disclaimer. No retail dilemma ever is a real problem, not with poverty, injustice and threats to democracy always looming large. But this quandary can be solved. April 2013 — […]

Categories
American Culture Kook Cooks

An Omnivore’s Manifesto

We’re trying veganism, My Beloved and I, now in our 11th week of cutting the ovo-lacto from our comfortable vegetarianism of over two decades. Look Out For That Bus! It’d been a year since my last fasting cholesterol blood test. The results so floored my doctor a week ago — total dropped from 244 to […]

Categories
The Course of Words

Sportin’ Life, Eh, Old Sport?

I knew a Jay Gatsby. We were in grade school in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and stayed close through high school. It probably wasn’t until junior high when I saw this trait of his — simply put it’s a person sure he can buy friends with money. But that is so simple it sounds sociopathic, when […]