I was pruning a rose tree this morning and piling the cutting onto our patio table. I thought they made an interesting photo.


Today is the heart surgery for our blog friend Jenny's little girl Lindley, in Ft. Worth, Texas. Please keep her in your thoughts.

There was an unfortunate incident at the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport over the weekend. A woman from New York, on her way to an alcohol treatment facility here in our fair city, became irate and unruly over a missed connection and was taken into custody by the Phoenix police. She was handcuffed and placed in a holding room, pending further processing. Unfortunately when the police checked on her five to ten minutes later, she had died.

The police say that they followed the same procedure in handling this case as they have in such cases since 2001. The family, through their attorney, says that they are suspicious of the handling of the case. All quite understandable reactions and both likely valid.

What is not so understandable is the language of the story that appeared in the papers this morning concerning the incident.

My complaint for today is the opening line from the article which begins, Carol Anne Gotbaum was searching for a place to heal when she left New York and headed to an alcohol rehabilitation center in Tucson, Ariz. I find that annoying.

I just can't get used to news that is designed to evoke strong emotions in the reader. I know that it is human nature to have an emotional reaction to situations, but this strikes me as purposefully manipulative on the part of the writer. What would have been wrong with, Carol Anne Gotbaum was headed to an alcohol rehabilitation center In Tucson, Arizona when she left New York? That's a rhetorical question. What's wrong is that the former makes a tragic story seem even more tragic, at least in the mind of the writer.

In other news, Mr. Dan Miller says in his newsletter this week that his commentary branding retirees as hedonists, was not well received. Ya think, Dan? Miller kind of backtracks by saying that retirement is common and he doesn't want to accept common. Someone has to be in the middle of the bell curve Danno and I am happy to provide the support you overachievers need.




Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky