December 2009

Should aulde resolutions be forgot?

December 30, 2009

January is named for the two-faced Roman god Janus, who looks into the future with one face and into the past with the other. That’s kind of where I’m at, too. On these dark days following the winter solstice, I look at the year ahead and resolve to be better in some small way, even [...]

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Check your dignity at the gate

December 29, 2009

As long as they’ve got a limitless supply of credulous young males who don’t mind cramming explosives into their underpants and trying to kill everybody around them, we’re not going to prevail in this airport-security thing. Because all we’ve got are 50,000 TSA employees who are most concerned with preventing your grandmother from getting through [...]

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The climate outside is frightful

December 9, 2009

This morning in Wichita, in the pale light of a low-rising sun, the temperature’s not so far above zero. That’s pretty darned cold for these parts, though it is December and the news stories today about winter storms “crashing” into the Midwest and “hammering” New England seem a little overwrought. People forget from year to [...]

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Hundreds of candles in the wind

December 8, 2009

Every year I get more of these ghosts of Christmas past in the room. They don’t say much. They don’t have to. I already know that the best Christmas in middle age cannot match the least one of childhood. Then it was about things yet to come. Now it’s about memory. But I have a [...]

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Give me that remote control

December 4, 2009

I’ve been watching more TV lately. I suppose it could be another sign of creeping, slack-jawed sloth, but I prefer to think it’s because there are better shows now — even though I concede that crap like “Real Housewives” and “The Bachelor” and “Who Wants to be a Publicity Whore?” remain depressingly popular. But doesn’t [...]

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