Opinions

Walkin'
05/09/2013 - 6:17pm
Brian Fleck
Pearl, our ditzy labradoodle, and I are in the doghouse lately. She committed her sin several weeks ago while we were watching Lexi, a Jack Russell terrier that comes to visit from time to time. Lexi is over 100 years-old in human terms, and has been given only several months to live from a variety of doggie disorders she’s contracted over the past decade. She keeps turning kibble into cobble, however, if you get my drift. Lexi’s owner attributes the dog’s against-...
Walkin'
03/26/2013 - 6:49pm
Sabra and I married on Valentine’s Day in the year 2000. Suggesting the date was a brilliant move on my part, even if I do say so myself. Not only is it easy to remember, it also saves buying a gift. These are two practical, utilitarian benefits that are buffed up by yet a third: it’s romantic. At least I thought the date would be easy to remember...
Food for Thought
03/26/2013 - 6:48pm
There was at least one constant every spring while I was growing up– a new spring coat or jacket– count on it. While we very often wore the same warm winter coat for two or three years running, the spring coats were always new, light-weight, pastel in color, and inexpensive. That last factor, the cost (often well under ten dollars), was probably...
Walkin'
03/19/2013 - 7:03pm
My back went out for the first time in the late 1970s. I was a twenty-something publishing a newspaper for the military community of Bamberg, Germany. Once a week I’d check a sedan out from the motor pool and drive 140 miles to the Stars and Stripes headquarters in Darmstadt to get my paper printed. Occasionally, a vehicle from the pool would not...
Food for Thought
03/19/2013 - 7:02pm
I remember, at sometime in my early childhood, how many big and mysterious words there were in the world. Not just words I heard adults use, and that I assumed I would someday learn the meanings of, but words that were just out there– posted on cars, buildings, billboards– waiting for me to unravel their mysteries. Reading was like a parlor trick...
Walkin'
03/12/2013 - 6:22pm
During a recent stay at a motel I saw something odd: in the bathroom there were two toilet paper rolls offered, one over the other. This brought to mind one of the age-old conundrums that has pestered human minds since the first rolls were mass produced in the 14th century: should toilet paper be hung so it reels off the top or bottom? Personally...