tucsonmike

I’ve written before about Downton Abbey and my favorite character, the butler Mr. Carson

In the Spring, we found out John Cleese, and Eric Idle were invading, sorry, coming to perform

Almost six hundred days, with a constant new territory.

In the United States, Redshirting is a term for college sports

Notice she only hears what she wants to hear

The head of the history department in my high school once showed off his knuckles

This may or may not happen in the general election for 2016

Even calling himself “The Donald,” can raise hackles

I'm told The Founding Fathers are racist, slave holding, dead white men

“Grandpa, you promised to take me out on Lake Champlain. Why are you running for President?”

I was watching the Grinch Who Stole Christmas and a terrible thought crossed what passes for my mind

It's a New Year, there are new Donald fights

Rwanda is known as “The Land of a Thousand Hills.”

I had heard of Boris Johnson before I started reading his books

It's not the atomic or hydrogen bomb. It's something more insidious

Have you thought this before?

Leading candidates' debates and demands are churlish and petulant

An inquisitive thirteen-year-old and an older woman, who isn't wiser

For anyone who visits New Orleans just once, they realize it's a unique place

One hundred and seven years since the last World Series victory

I suspect social media is making the following tougher

This isn't a Kumbaya moment

I would be airmailed off the Brooklyn Bridge with weights

I've been on the wrong side of a Sicilian stare before

Toward the end of the Eighteenth Century, slavery was already becoming economically unfeasible

Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed invents a clock

And Can Be President of the United States

You can watch it happening on a screen

I am a Yank, but I am also an Anglophile. I enjoy things British

Social media has changed the game

You don't have to pull people out of burning buildings

Meeting and having chemistry may or not be deliberate. Ashley Madison can be nothing but deliberate.

OK, why the Mets? Don't the Cubs have a longer history of futility?

Many thought Caesar wanted to be a dictator

Why do people care about Cecil?

I am no paragon. I am diabetic, can stand to lose weight etc.

Time to stop being mouthy

Why is Trump running?

African-Americans and whites protesting outside the South Carolina State House

Merkel tells the misbehaving Greeks they have to clean up the mess on her terms.

I am being cynical, because it is my First Amendment right and because I can

I thought this case would be easy. It was anything but

Expect to be humiliated, if you are poor in America

I never thought a lot about this, until I read Killing Patton, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard

I object in the most strenuous manner to Pandora eating me!

I would try to read, and he would come up on my lap. Trying to write? Forget about it

People would call in saying, the snowdrift was a 'Gronk' and a half high

The Patriots compound was referred to as “Fort Belichick.”

My take on American Football and the issues I would like to cover

The Athens of America, the Hub

Isn’t this an oxymoron? Maybe, but look at this essay as a silly movie review.

I’ve heard of chain spreading and seed spreading, but manspreading?

I never developed that much interest in Richard III, until his remains were discovered.

One major discussion has been about racial profiling. I can now safely tell you I have been profiled

The Chicago Cubs haven't won the World Series for more than a century

It was a bright sunny day in Mesa Verde, though Diana Sanchez, dispatcher extraordinaire was fielding some very…

"Ask your mother," Anastase said softly. "Mom will say no," he wailed. I burst out laughing

My Rwandan friend Anastase and I have started working on his biography. This is from a few years ago

A Paris Obstacle Course for Americans. This is meant to be a modern, Mark Twain Innocents Abroad type look at…

The first reaction when you tell people you have to go to court is “What did you do? Or is it for jury duty?”

Mr. Charton, aren’t you a little old to be going to Hollywood? If I had been stopped by LAPD for any reason and…

Anastase was driving back home, so his youngest son, eight year old Cadeau could take his shower and go to his…

Cleopatra inhabits the reptile house at the Bronx Zoo. She is young, and found out the Bronx is not a glamorous…

The first act is what he said in the interview. A 25% tax on all Chinese goods coming here. We are defaulting on…

...or The Illinois Wisconsin Border War. What is going on with the protests in Wisconsin is serious. I could not…

September 12th, 1974: Ray Lynch thought he’d seen enough conflict in Vietnamese Rice paddies, not thinking battle…

(With apologies to country singer Joe Nichols) The administrator of Cottonwood Assisted Living in Mesa Verde,…

Meeting Susi Baldwin. The story of Susi Baldwin begins for me in January 1976, a cold January. It is the…

Phone calls to the Mesa Verde Police Department were normally about a cat up a tree, so two emergency calls in a…