What Martin Luther King Jr. Day means to me
This image is my great-great-great-(great)?grandfather Louis Battenotte.
I was once called a "Nigger."
It was when I was walking down a street in Saskatoon, Sask., when I was a kid. A...
The Melvins, the Subaru and Sorcerer
We finally got our new car yesterday. We had been talking about it for over a year. I insisted on driving my old 1992 Toyota pickup straight into the...
The needle and the damage done
About 100 years ago, in a small town in a galaxy far away ...
I was actually a crime reporter.
No, I didn't wear a fedora, I didn't keep 20-year-old bourbon...
Words that make you cringe
"Doesn't speak with a negro dialect."
I have to be honest. I KNOW what my reaction would have been if some right-wing Republican congressman or senator had said such a...
We have so far to go, but we have come so far
Once thing that hit me like a ton of bricks watching tonight's BCS championship game between Texas and Alabama.
Did you know that neither team had a black man on...
100 years of a national park done right
2010 is the centennial celebration for my current favourite place in the world, Glacier National Park.
I have come to find that Glacier is a place to renew, refresh, recharge...
My letter to the FDA today
Here is a letter I e-mailed today to the Food and Drug Administration. Tomorrow is the deadline to comment on the FDA's new powers to regulate tobacco products, created...
A corny, hokey and unashamably bleeding heart liberal good time
One thing that I've really been struck by is Hollywood's near-obsession with American Indians. I have very mixed feelings about it.
The natives in "Avatar" were an extremely obvious allegory...
Al Franken doing good works
When you get down or frustrated with health care, remember, some good things still happen in D.C. and there are some good people in D.C. Al Franken is one...
Musical ties through the generations and those “Ingleses locos”
The “Oldies But Goodies” Friday night at PPOV post last week got me recollecting about a neat thing that happened this summer. It was something that showed me how...