Down on the Farm

Pitchers and catchers reported to spring training this week. There is hope! Baseball is on its way. I would rather watch the Minnesota Twins, but they train across the continent...

The most efficient way to become familiar with the wildlife of the southern Arizona desert is to visit the Sonoran Desert Museum--which is actually a zoo, and one of the...

Not all has been peaches and cream in Tucson, Ariz., this winter, I'll tell you that much. About a month ago gray clouds obscured the sun for three consecutive days...

Last week, it rained enough in Tucson for the rivers to run, however briefly. Only days later, the channels dried up again, dry enough to be used by the condo...

Due to the modern miracle (or curse) that is the Internet, and due to one of its miraculous (or demonic) offshoots, Facebook, an invention which allows people to broadcast their...

The Sonoran Desert which surrounds Tucson and extends down into Mexico is hardly like the sandy Sahara Desert of elementary school lore. No endless sea of shifting dunes here. In...

Is there anything more depressing than a cold mid-winter Sunday afternoon? Sunday morning is fresh and clean, a time for a newspaper and coffee--and some fuzzy slippers. The phone stays...

During the slow news week between Christmas and the New Year, every news organization digs up the news events from the previous year and splashes them across the front page...

This New Year's resolution business is for the birds. What we should have is New Week's resolutions. That way we could acknowledge our failures and come up with something more...

One of the treasures of any university is the main library, with its many floors of books and a basement full of magazines and periodicals from ages past to last...

After a late-night arrival in Tucson, I got up the next morning to an empty 'fridge. Hankering for a Reuben sandwich, I walked to the neighborhood market two blocks away...

"He's probably pumping gas somewhere," I heard somebody say the other day in a disparaging tone about a former classmate whose prospects for success apparently weren't bright. Except, the classmate...

Thanksgiving: When millions of Americans gather together and try to convince themselves that turkey actually tastes good. What we're trying to do, of course, is fulfill expectations created by that...

A while back, I had the honor of meeting a pair of sisters in an area nursing home. Little sister was 99 years old and big sister was 104. As...

Good grief, Brett Favre is fun to watch when he's on your side. The Vikings are loaded with talent, but in football all the talent in the world can waste...