ArcaMax

In Kansas, where the corn is as high as a state rep's teenage girlfriend, voters stampeded the polls to protect abortion rights.

They won, too, about 60-40. As reporter who has covered even the dingiest of suburban elections can tell you, 60-40 is a murder. Also, the losing percentage corresponds almost exactly to the percentage of rabid, ...Read more

When an elderly woman she knew buried her husband cheap, without even a Catholic Mass, an old aunt of mine said, "She buried that man like he was a dog."

The man remains buried. Not a "woof" out of him.

Where I live, in Massachusetts, what we used to call a "police dog" was recently killed in the line of duty. We don't call them "police dogs" ...Read more

Here's how I explain global warming.

If you don't believe that pumping millions of tons of chemicals and smoke and garbage into the air, the earth and the sea has any effect on the world, think about your trash.

Let's say you decide to quit putting your garbage in plastic bags, putting the bags in a plastic bin and then wheeling the bin out to...Read more

"World without end. Amen."

So goes a part of the old prayer, though our part of the world, our green and blue globe, may indeed end, and that end will be made by people in a factory.

Of course, that's only true if you think our globe is the world, and it's not.

The world is forever, going on and on and on, outrunning scientists and astronauts...Read more

About 40 years ago, in my mid-20s, I was in a bar in Missouri.

It was not a nice bar. It was not in a nice neighborhood. Many of the people who went there were not nice people, and they did un-nice things to each other out in the gravel parking lot, things that were violent or sexual or both.

You sat at the bar or at a table or in one of the ...Read more

If my father hadn't died in 1987, he'd be 103.

He grew up in a French Canadian immigrant neighborhood in a Northeastern mill town where the houses were made out of wood, the mills were made out of granite and the neighborhoods were full of people who lived on nickels. The neighborhoods were dominated by huge, ornate Catholic churches. The ...Read more

TikTok videos and tweets aren't long because you can't get anyone to pay attention to anything for long, not unless it's "Lord of the Rings," and they've seen it six times. If the Second Amendment to the Constitution were longer, not nearly as many people would be able to quote the whole thing.

In Ukraine, where stray dogs are eating dead ...Read more

There is a legend (or they say there is) that, if you go to Rome, you can pitch pocket change into one of the fountains and it will draw you back to Rome. This is good if you enjoyed your first trip to Rome. If you were beaten and robbed on your first trip to Rome, for God's sake, don't drop any money in the fountain.

But that's not how fairy ...Read more

Ukraine is fighting for its life, and the United States is sending weapons, and the price of gasoline is up.

Which of the above statements is the most important?

If you said the price of gas, then congratulations! You're as right as Glenn Beck and the late Rush Limbaugh on a three-day pill bender during an NRA convention.

Not being able to ...Read more

School shooters always take more than the limit.

Let me explain.

When I hunted doves in the Midwest, the game laws allowed you to shoot 10 doves a day, and you were allowed to have 20 dead ones in your possession. Any more and you got fined.

Doves are hard to hit, too. A dove flies not in a straight line but in zigs and zags, like a child ...Read more

Things I liked when I was in fourth grade:

My dog. He was a big boxer dog named Joey. He had big black jowls and sad brown eyes, and he loved me.

My mother. She was a bank bookkeeper. She used to take me to downtown Taunton, Massachusetts, on Friday nights, back when the whole world got paid on Friday, and she would buy me a limeade at the ...Read more

If there's one thing Vladimir Putin's mob has in common with the warriors of the American white nationalist movement, it's that both groups like killing civilians, and neither group does well against soldiers.

"We'll take Kyiv in six weeks!" the manifesto of war declares.

They do not. They start killing old ladies and 11-year-old girls because...Read more

I am not frail. I go to a gym. I lift weights. I walk pretty fast. I carry in the groceries when my wife, Deborah, comes back from the market. We live in a second-floor apartment, so the grocery carrying is harder than it sounds. I haven't lost my hair.

All that age-denying ego puffery aside, I turned 65 yesterday, a little after 7 p.m.

And my...Read more