When you write a newspaper column, some people automatically assume that you must know something. Incredible, I know, but it happens. To disprove this notion, I will now answer my reader mail. Q: My eighteen-month-old daughter takes long naps, goes to sleep early at night and still sleeps late. What…
“You folks don’t need another holiday. What you folks need are jobs,” said then-Governor Evan Mecham to Pastor Warren Stewart. The remark was made in 1986 during a meeting with black leaders who had gathered to persuade Mecham that Arizona needed a holiday to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. The…
Got a problem with the bank or company holding the mortgage on your house? Don’t count on Arizona’s Banking Department to help you out. Alan and Barbara Woodruff found that out the hard way. They bought an $89,000 home in Phoenix four years ago and assumed the mortgage, but soon…
I’m puzzled by this latest turn in Steve Benson’s career. Generally, I enjoy the images Benson draws for the Arizona Republic. He has a talented pen. He may even become a cartoonist of stature if and when he matures. To do that, however, Benson must stop his slavish imitations of…
Based on my son’s growth rate, his pediatrician estimates he’ll grow to be about six feet six or seven. This is not wonderful news. When I chose to become a parent, it never occurred to me that I might one day have to buy groceries for a Jolly Teen Giant…
Maybe Sam Steiger can appreciate the humor in the current mess at the state parole board. Governor Rose Mofford has fired board member Ron Johnson without pay. Ironically, Steiger tried to do the same thing to Johnson more than a year ago and almost went to jail for his efforts…
Why is Mayor Terry Goddard getting away with this ridiculous car race? Did anyone ask you about spending millions in taxpayers’ money for this slapdash project. The city has gone on a wartime footing to repave downtown streets, build garages and overpasses, and erect concrete sidewalk barriers. They couldn’t work…
There is much to be said about the arts in Arizona, and a lot of it isn’t kind. Too often, the productions and exhibitions that unfold before Arizonans’ eyes pander to a worn-out and pathetic sensibility. It’s the sensibility expressed recently by a community leader and member of the Phoenix…
While most business types in these parts are trying their best to lure jobs and people to Phoenix, there’s a new gadfly in the sticks south of here with a different goal: Drive a million people out of Arizona. Actually, 48-year-old Mark Acuff is no newcomer. He’s a third-generation Arizonan,…
About four times a year, Geri Owens rolls into Phoenix in a dusty gray van that’s practically exploding with yapping puppies. The pups, mostly golden retrievers and German shepherds, are future guide dogs for blind people. The dogs are owned by Guide Dogs for the Blind, Inc., a fifty-year-old San…
Sandi Smith had everything a career woman could want, including, at least until very recently, a penis. Born as a male, Sandi hasn’t been in a men’s room in two years. Her physical appearance is that of an early-middle-aged businesswoman. Throughout her transformation, she has continued to financially support her…
Here are some notes on the reporter’s trade from a few of the best. I.F. Stone speaking in Andrew Patner’s I.F. Stone: A Portrait: “Your publisher is a guy who made five million dollars in the toilet-paper business and thinks that made him a journalist and he doesn’t know from…
Of course Ollie North should go to prison. The jury has rightfully rejected North’s distorted notion that a decorated military man is above the law. North and his gang of squalid schemers were manipulative, secretive and intensely dishonest. In accepting an expensive security fence for his home from an arms…
Poor Gary Driggs, everyone keeps saying. Such a shame. Gary and his two brothers–John and Douglas–have been booted out of their soft spots as chief moneychangers at Western Savings and Loan. Sure, it’s true that Western has dropped $300 million in the last two quarters. But, after all, the Driggs…
Maybe you cannot imagine what it is like to be Robert Usdane. He is a Republican leader who is the key to a Democratic bill to honor Martin Luther King Jr. with a paid holiday. He is a Jew who sits on the board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League…
Charlie Keating and Gary Driggs have fallen. And in a city edgy about the self-destruction of its icons, a question is being posed: Will Keith Turley, the man who pushed the Arizona Public Service utility into real estate and banking with disastrous results, be next? A few years ago, the…
Want to know why the freeway system is running out of money? Want to know why you’re likely to be asked to vote for another tax hike to complete the 230-mile system voters approved in 1985? Well, read this and weep: The right-of-way for the entire system–just the land on…
Is Phoenix’s potential “Central Park of the Southwest” going to become just a piece of little-used turf stuck amid yet another gaggle of shiny high-rises? That’s what some activists fear is inevitable as an eight-person team starts its job of overseeing the planning of midtown’s controversial Indian School site. “You…
She was the Queen of Television and we worshiped at her throne. So great was our devotion that some of us even worshiped at her son’s throne: In 1953, a company called Moulded Products actually manufactured a Little Ricky potty seat, a multicolored toilet-training device decorated with caricatures of Lucy…
Great Caesar’s ghost! SHOOTER’S WORLD, a giant indoor shooting range that opens May 6 in west Phoenix, proudly proclaims “Armorum securis” as its slogan–which goes to show you that Latin’s a deadly language, not a dead one. PENSUS GROUP prexy and gun-range developer RICHARD SHAW tells us the phrase, which…
The gang rape in Central Park is one of those unspeakably vicious crimes that traumatizes the entire country. The other morning, Donald Trump bought full-page ads in New York’s newspapers calling for a renewal of the death penalty there. The New York Post keeps referring to it as the nightmare…
Despite excessive cheerleading from the Arizona Republic, the Phoenix Suns are not a lock to win the National Basketball Association championship. They may not even come close. If Fat Lever didn’t sustain an injury last Sunday night I wouldn’t have bet on them to get out of the first round…
