Whew. I’m tired. Beth and I traveled to Oconomowoc, Wisconsin Saturday afternoon—a strategic location for our long awaited trip with our son Gus and his Aunt Bev to a Milwaukee Brewers game. But not just any game. At this game, every single attendee received an alarm clock. But not just any alarm clock: A Bob […]

Here we are on July Fourth, and as a show of patriotism, a big American beer brand decided to rename its beer America for the summer. This Canadian brand did something very different to celebrate that country’s own independence celebration, Canada Day, July 1. Your assignment: Compare and contrast. For our part, Beth and I […]

For the sake of convenience, I usually tell people my parents were from Pittsburgh. But really, they were from a tiny hamlet called Denbo, about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh. To put a finer point on it, my mom grew up in a company town, and the patch of row houses took its name from […]

With all the passion and angst and fear and — in some quarters joy — attending the presidential election this year, it’s easy to forget Tip O’Neill’s favorite maxim: All politics is local. Of course presidential elections matter (see Supreme Court), but in my view, real change bubbles up, it doesn’t trickle down. Attention must […]

We get horrified. We get sad. We get voyeuristic—we want the details. We get angry. We want this never to happen again. We blame. It goes away. And it happens again. We’re doing something wrong. That’s what I know for sure. I have opinions about that, but everybody does right about now; it just sort […]