ArcaMax

I've been through this before.

Here's how it's gonna go.

When I first started working in newsrooms 40 years ago, not only could you smoke, you could put 'em out on the floor. One of the editors, a fellow in his 40s, smoked a pack of nonfilters every shift.

I moved on, and my next newspaper employer said you could only smoke in the lunchroom ...Read more

After doing an hourlong local news podcast, which is not as much fun as you'd think, I got off what I laughingly call "work" and headed to a local liquor store. It was payday, and I was on schedule to pick up the weekly 12-pack.

I'm semiretired after nearly 40 years in daily newspaper work, and while I used to buy cigars and beer whenever I ...Read more

The only way to write about national politics is to write about local politics first. You won't see anything on the national stage you haven't already seen in some town hall where they're swearing in the new city council, or in the grandly-named "atrium" of the local city hall, which is made of poured concrete and may last another 30 years if ...Read more

The part of the Christmas story that moves me the most is the babe lying in a stable among animals.

Frowsy and drowsy, curious and accepting, the animals watch, shifting from hoof to hoof, coming closer, the donkey with his soft nose, the curly lamb, the big, haughty-looking camel who spits at impolite moments.

The animals were my favorite ...Read more

In Kentucky, where the preachers are going to be busy for a while, a number of good employees died at work when a tornado hit a candle factory. Nothing closes the circle of the working life like dying at your job.

Some employees are saying management wouldn't let them leave, although the same sources say a number of bad employees snuck out ...Read more

At Fox headquarters in New York City, someone set the "all-American" Christmas tree on fire.

As a lover of Christmas, I do not applaud the burning of Christmas trees unless they are decorated with swastikas or severed heads. That leaves a lot of room for self-expression in the area of Christmas trees.

Anyway, I guess I missed the point of the ...Read more

I went to get my COVID-19 booster the day before Thanksgiving. I had an appointment at a chain drugstore in a strip mall located in the dope-shooting heart of the fairly bad neighborhood where I was born.

I checked in and sat down on a plastic chair, waiting with several others of my kind.

I'd been panhandled on my way into the drugstore, and ...Read more

Donald Trump has not been reinstated as president; dark forces continue to conceal Hillary's emails; it seems all those school shootings really happened; and no dead member of the Kennedy family has returned to life.

There's your political column right there, pal.

Now for a holiday story about pie.

It was two days before Thanksgiving. Having ...Read more

In a suburb near my mid-sized city, there is a commercial building on a corner. Across the street is a grocery store, a discount store and a Burger King. Next door is a car dealer. There's a liquor store on the other side and a convenience store right across the street. In short, it's a neighborhood that can sustain life all by itself, and it'...Read more

Will gas prices topple President Joe Biden?

The French demanded bread. The queen is supposed to have told them to eat cake. The king's head thudded into the basket below the guillotine. Tea chests splashed into Boston Harbor. In 2007, Mexicans rioted over the price of corn used to make tortillas.

The president of the United States of America ...Read more

Some habits are hard to break. Smoking. Drinking. Drugs.

Some habits, once broken, are hard to pick up again. Voting. Going to church on Sunday. Reading a daily newspaper.

The drunks living in precarious sobriety say of their habit, "you pick it up where you put it down," meaning that, no matter how many years sober, one shot of Wild Turkey ...Read more

A month or so ago, I went to five different stores before I found the kind of cat food our cats like. My wife searches the grocery store for the canned soup I enjoy. A fellow I know who likes ball games and hot wings complains bitterly about the shortage of chicken wings in our local markets.

The supply chain, she is broken, says the television...Read more

You could say he fell in the middle of the store because the store is so small that nearly every part of it is in the middle.

But the store is not in the middle of the block. It's on a corner. Where else would you open what has always and forever been called a "corner store"?

And the windows are covered with paper ads for off-brand ...Read more