This is becoming another summer that didn’t quite happen. It follows the bummer summer of 2020, which was canceled by COVID-19.
“This is the captain speaking, I’m turning the fasten seat belt light on as there’s turbulence ahead.”
As a child of the 1970s and a lifelong fan of Pittsburgh sports, I remember that as a glorious decade.
In the summer, boys dress for the warm weather, but girls dress hardly at all. Most high school guys are in baggy shorts, while many of the girls are wearing shorts so short that parts of their rear end remain exposed.
Four police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 described this week to the House Select Committee how they allegedly were brutalized and subjected to racist taunts and how the rioters shouted that Donald Trump had sent them to “Stop the Steal.”
Maybe it was because I took two real vacations within three weeks. Maybe there’s some subconscious guilt in my psyche about relaxing. I don’t know the reason, but whatever the cause, I had the dream again last week while at the beach.
I was saddened to learn last Sunday that one of my heroes, the aptly named Robert “Bob” Moses, had died at age 86.
Many of us spent the pandemic months obsessing over how our mug looked on Zoom and other video-chatting services. Poor lighting was a torment, and the lack of sunshine and exercise produced what’s been dubbed “lockdown face.”
One thing Republicans did right since gaining control of the West Virginia Legislature in 2014 was to adopt a plan for single-delegate districts for all House members (the bill passed House and Senate in 2018 and was signed by Gov. Jim Justice).
In the pantheon of pessimists, Arthur Schopenhauer towers.
When President Joe Biden referred to 12 individuals who are said to originate the majority of falsehoods about vaccine efficacy on social media, my thoughts turned to my fellow West Virginians and whether some have died as a result of the corrosive words of the dirty dozen.
Should we continue to have a statue of Stonewall Jackson on the West Virginia Capitol grounds? He was a leader of a rebellion against the United States, a leader in a war fought to preserve slavery. Maybe we should just take him down, forget about him.
There has been much said about the shortage of workers in the post-pandemic period. Unfortunately, this might not be universally true, or a permanent sign that full recovery is around the corner.
Anti-social behavior has reached pandemic levels. Disruptive airline passengers are punching flight attendants. Thugs are attacking Asians, gays and other minority groups. Criminals have grown more brazen in bringing violence to the streets and into American politics as seen in the savage in…
Not everyone hesitating to get a COVID-19 vaccination is a crazy conspiracy theorist. Many have reasonable concerns. Here are a few thoughts.
Syndicated investigative reporter Drew Pearson, lesser known than the Hall of Fame wide receiver of the same name, was part of history in a way that connects to today, as history frequently does, specifically, to Gov. Jim Justice and his tortured relationship with the press.
In another lifetime, I used to referee karate tournaments. Although they could get kind of rough, especially for higher-ranking adults, they weren’t like today’s full-contact mixed martial arts or submission matches. The idea was to give regular people of all ages and levels a chance to safe…
Having patiently circled its prey for several weeks, the delta variant has pounced. A doctor, echoing many in his profession, said that, nowadays at his hospital, it is only the unvaccinated who seek treatment for COVID-19.
The CEO of Morgan Stanley wants all the boys and girls back in the financial giant’s Times Square office by Labor Day. “If you can go to a restaurant in New York City,” James Gorman told them, “you can come into the office. And we want you in the office.”
Throughout the pandemic, especially when school was virtual only, our son took a lot of extra online classes offered by one of those extracurricular education services. We mainly signed him up because he needed things to do and my wife and I needed time to work.
Tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion is not. The difference according to Nerd Wallet, boils down to lying and hiding. Putting money in a 401(k) is a legal method of reducing taxes. Hiding income from the Internal Revenue Service isn’t. So, was the indictment of Allen Weisselberg and the Trump…
Writer, world traveler and Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winner William Saroyan titled a memoir “Places Where I’ve Done Time,” which would be a suitable appellation for a summation of the lives of many newsmen, including this one.
More than six months after the fact, CNN’s interviews with Capitol protesters and their relatives have made it clear they are not to be confused with those who stormed the Bastille.
Tennis superstar Naomi Osaka is the world’s best-paid female athlete. She made an estimated $60 million last year. The 23-year-old is on top of the tennis world, but is her refusal to honor the rules set by that world justified?
Just in time for Independence Day, the Congressional Budget Office released its first set of projections to include the effects of the American Rescue Plan enacted in March. Results aren’t good.
A funny thing happened on the way to California’s collapse. It didn’t happen.
Not that he needed the help, but lawmakers in California and West Virginia and other states of philosophical bent akin to the latter appear determined to prove Voltaire correct in his assertion that the only means to comprehend infinity is “to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”
It is time to again celebrate Independence Day. America was established as “One nation, under God, indivisible” and a destination that would provide justice for all. Miss Liberty smiled for those who came to our shores.
History has forgotten the exact year that my father’s family began celebrating Independence Day with a reunion, but it likely was during his boyhood in the 1920s or 1930s. Surely there was great anticipation at the approach of each of those annual events, as excitement built until the day th…
In early June, my wife had her chemotherapy port removed at the James Cancer Center at Ohio State University. It marked what we pray is the end of a long journey, figuratively and literally.
One can’t explain all critical race theory in these few words, but here’s one basic concept central to this political and cultural fistfight brewing now. Note this is not being taught in our public schools. This is to help explain what it is. Here we go.
Taxes are how we raise the money needed to run government. The rich have the wherewithal to bear most of those costs. These points are especially connected at a time when the rich have gotten so much richer and the government needs to do so much more.
Easy comparisons frequently prove insufficient, which I realized upon this writing to be the case with a comparison I frequently apply to copy editors.
Whether discussing QAnon’s predictions of a coming “storm” or Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” about a rigged election, it is time that we replace the term “conspiracy theory,” and the gravity that the label implies, with a term more compatible with similar myths, such as bigfoot and alien crop circ…
After a recent funeral in my hometown, I was among people I have known for almost my entire life, although many I hadn’t seen in a long time.
They tried. Oh, they tried. Republicans spent a decade bashing and voting to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. And what did they get for all their trouble? A 7-2 ruling by a conservative Supreme Court to uphold the health insurance program also known as “Obamacare.”
Progressive Democrats want to know, “What’s up with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.?” Is he confused? Obstinate? A “Democrat in Name Only (DINO)?”
When people read avidly rather than watched dully, writers were stars, none brighter in his day than Charles Dickens. He came to America in 1842, 30 years old and already a literary Beatle, having shaken the world with “Oliver Twist” and “The Pickwick Papers.” High society in the States fawn…
China is America’s economic rival. The way capitalists deal with rivals is to compete. President Joe Biden vows to compete with this rival on the rival’s terms. He calls it “extreme competition.”
On the cusp of West Virginia Day, without offense I offer representative samples of Mountain State residents’ opinions of my writing. Fortunately, the favorable responses generally outnumber the unfavorable, although the latter are clear winners in the battle of all-caps.
The 2022 election in West Virginia will be about campaigns, fund raising, political ads, debates and policy disagreements.
Donald Trump is no longer president. COVID-19 is no longer the threat it was. And Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, is back to more routine briefings on vaccination rates and such. So why does Fauci remain so much in the news?
We have a knack for dishonestly telling ourselves that, as time progresses, the human race generally becomes better on the aggregate.
President Joe Biden postulated that our children and grandchildren are “going to be doing their doctoral theses on the issue of who succeeded, autocracy or democracy.” He went on to say, “we’ve got to prove democracy works.”
This is the first year that Juneteenth, on June 19, 2021, will be an official holiday in West Virginia.
Few things are quite so fearsome as lawmakers out to do good by way of legislation. The country — hell, the whole damn world — would be better if lawmakers satisfied their lust for benevolence by helping an old lady across the street, adopting a kitten or dropping a few bills in a busker’s box.
If it was Sen. Joe Manchin’s intention to send quakes of discontent rumbling across the far horizons, he has succeeded. Writing in last Sunday’s Gazette-Mail, his elevation of Senate bipartisanship to heights known primarily to the sherpas has triggered numerous political fault lines. Manchi…
Those of us who have followed the career of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., knew that, eventually, his sometimes reasonable and other times obstinate centrism would create a problem for the Biden administration.
It was 1961. President John F. Kennedy had come to the steps of the student union at the University of Michigan to announce the idea of the Peace Corps. I was a student and, upon graduation, I joined to go to Africa — much to the concern of my parents, who had only one child after fleeing Na…
We don’t change when we see the light. We change when we feel the heat. And this year, we begin to feel the Social Security heat.
