It’s no longer news that on April 20th, the catastrophic explosion of an offshore rig sent an undersea gusher of oil boiling to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana. Or that winds, tides and time have overwhelmed efforts to contain a slick the size of Cyprus, spreading globs of emulsified goo to the […]

It’s no longer news that on April 20th, the catastrophic explosion of an offshore rig sent an undersea gusher  oil boiling to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana. Or that winds, tides and time have overwhelmed efforts to contain a slick the size of Cyprus, spreading globs of emulsified goo to the […]

Here’s a classic non sequitur: Watercress and rockets. Let me put it in the form of a question: How did Huntsville, Alabama, once a dozy little southern town whose notable claim to fame was its reputation as “The Watercress Capital of the World” morph into a globally renowned “Rocket City” almost overnight? And how did […]

I received, completed, and returned my 2010 Census form the other day. This was Carol’s and my part of the decennial, or every-10-year, count of adults and children — citizens and non-citizens — living legally or illegally in the United States. “Count” is the operative word, for the Census is not all that it used […]

I have discovered the latest medical fib, on the order of “this won’t hurt a bit” and “the doctor will be with you shortly.”  I recently went under the 21st Century equivalent of “the knife,” involving assorted probes and scopes and zapper devices rather than scalpels.  But the prep hasn’t changed: Strip buck naked and […]

Over the weeks that you and I have been figuratively tramping around the American West together, I’ve been stuffing clippings and notes in my pocket.  At the risk of revealing how diffuse and cluttered my mind has become, here are four of the items that caught my eye. No Sweat With the nation still scuffling […]

Let’s conclude our odyssey through the West with a look at dry yet surprisingly green Arizona. Green, thanks to irrigation and irrigation alone. Without it, the bulk of Arizona would still be brown and barren. There’d be no Phoenix-to-Tucson mega-city, no spring “Cactus League” Major League baseball games, no farming to speak of. The West […]

Let’s get back to our California expedition, starting at the beach. A quick factoid: 54 percent of the people in the United States live within 80 kilometers (50 miles) of our shorelines. That makes historical sense, since settlement naturally began on the east, west, and Gulf coasts and moved inland. So you’d think that packing […]

We already stuck a toe into California — and quickly pulled it back out when it landed in the searing Mojave Desert. But let’s tough it out and take another look at the Golden State. Golden, as in sunny, and golden because of the fortunes made by the lucky few who found gold high in […]