Someone wiser than I said "The difference between old people and young people is that old people are always telling stories about the past, while young people are talking about what's happening now while projecting their futures," or words to that effect, and they're right.

In the sixth decade of this life I can admit that's true about me, but if you're younger you're making that astute observation without realizing what's…

There's probably a special flavor of Roman Catholic gehenna-hell (green fire?) for what I did on Friday, October 21st, so embarrassing that I'm just now confessing it to you, my 6S brothers and sisters because I'm too chicken to face the church music just yet.

I had gotten up at o-dark-thirty in time to iron a shirt and drive four miles to the cathedral, where some thirty folks were spread among the expanse of seating for 3,000 and you need to know the circumstances.

That Mass…

Griff started at sun-up, when the air temperure may have been forty, boarding-up the rough-hewn cabin his family used as a weekend retreat just 2 hours' drive from Phoenix.

The structure was notched-log construction, started by his grandfather, and finished by Griff's dad and him when Griff was still in early elementary school.

He closed the main and drained the water pipes, a by-design capability his ingenious dad had plumbed to keep pipes from bursting.

The board-up,…

Are PETA folks up in arms that tens of animals were shot and killed--not tranquilized--following their mass escape from an exotic animal preserve near Zanesville, Ohio, last night...because I'm guessing they are.

If that's the case, if the PETA organization is upset, please have your members step up to the plate.

Let's tie some bloody steaks around your volunteers' necks and tie them to trees, with dart-wielding marksmen nearby.

I'll pay for some of the steaks,…

Strings of unfrosted bulbs, a few flimsy tables and chairs, and foods ranging from 'Sonoran-style' hot dogs to tacos, menudo and burritos are shibboleths of the impromptu restaurant boom that's emerged and been sustained in commercial parking lots and on corners, all over Phoenix.  

The mobile fonditas seem to cater to Mexican palates, efficient little kitchens-on-wheels whose operators are themselves, Mexican-American (or Mexican?), and the number of these food-stands is…

The upper and lower shelves on 30 yards of the toilet paper aisle have me on T.P.-labelling overwhelm: 12 Rolls=24 or 36 or 48, Quilted, Triple-Soft, Softest, Double-Strength, Strongest, Scented, Textured, Quilted, and combinations, therein... and do you really think I care which roll my hand grabs in those indelicate moments of extreme need?

If Consumer's Reports has done an analysis of the wisest choices for the…

Tristan was born two years, two months, two days, two hours, two minutes and two seconds before his little sister, Evelyn. but they might as well have been twins.  

Tristan skateboards to Greenleaf Elementary every day with Evelyn walking beside him, and he  carries her lunch in his backpack because that's what an older brother should do for his little sister.

Tristan caught one…

That window needed replacing, and I guess two years of the desert's haboobs can pit a windshield enough to stay under the insurance company's radar.

Oh yeah, I'm pissed, feel violated.

And I confess I haven't had the heart to pick up and look at the item you inadvertantly selected as the bullet's resting place. So's you know, it's the neck of one of my guitar cases.…

You don't ask me for money or s-e-x.

(And when you do have to assuage that erotic itch with some hard-chargin' scratchin', you don't bring him around or hurt my writer's-sensitive feelings by giving me the blow-by-blow descriptions play-by-play details of your romps.)

We fulfill each other's hugs and dinner companion and movie-snugglin'…

Priests come by every few days to comfort her as calendar pages fall closer to a 93rd birthday she may not see. Her eldest daughter's calendar is about to mark the thirty-day anniversary of a double mastectomy.  The daughter's daughter, just 40, continued to nurse her son of ten months until exploratory surgery revealed a rare cancer thriving within her. Three women...mothers...daughters, all in one bloodline, all waging different battles with different defenses and strategies and chances,…

The medicine cabinet's door clicked as its magnet paired with the frame's, and Adam stared at himself. Holding his image with his eyes, he rotated his head slowly to stare at the bright welt across the whole side of his face, bumpless and redder than razor burn.

The argument didn't require loud just as a silencer doesn't affect the deadliness of the fired bullet. Every disonant moment in their relationship came to mind, like…