It’s been more than three weeks, and for most of us, life returned to “normal” long ago. Or never left it, frankly. The whole thing really shook a lot of us here in Arizona — particularly in my favorite Arizona city, Tucson. I was lucky enough to travel there a week and a half ago, […]

I love Facebook. I know people love to hate it — and I have my share of that, for sure – but I particularly loved it last night, when I posed the following: Sophie insists she wants to do her science fair project about carousels. Any suggestions? I’m not sure I’m up to building one. The […]

The illustrations for this week’s cover story in Phoenix New Times (my day job) are really remarkable. The story is about mental health care in Arizona (or lack thereof) and the dangerous idea of hindsight, following a huge tragedy. Our art director started playing with the notions of Rorschach tests and optical illusions. Here’s an interview […]

In light of the events of the last week and a half, I decided Saturday to get a little bit brave myself. Nothing by comparison, of course, but this was big for me. I sat for two hours and stared at adults with developmental disabilities. Don’t worry, it was entirely appropriate — a production by […]

I couldn’t help but notice that Sophie colored MLK her favorite shade.

I don’t know that I have anything to say about what happened in Tucson that has much more meaning than anything anyone else has to say, but a very nice editor at the Washington Post insisted otherwise, and this piece I wrote will appear in the paper’s Outlook section tomorrow. It could have happened anywhere — […]

For the last day, I haven’t been able to get the tune to the Aerosmith song “Janie’s Got A Gun” out of my head. But in my head it’s: Sophie’s got a gun…. I was interviewing a lawyer yesterday who does a lot of work on behalf of the mentally ill, and we were talking (because […]

  Thank you, Cate, for mentioning this song yesterday after my post about The Weepies. Cate wrote, “Oh, I love The Weepies. `World Spins Madly On’ is one of my most favorite songs ever. It’s a breakup song, but I always think about it when something unexplicable happens. (Like, say, shootings.)” I looked it up. […]

I saw this video where I get a lot of music recommendations these days — the Frances/Smeeks blog — a few weeks ago, and put the album on my Christmas list. Last weekend I finally unearthed the CD from a pile of presents and the girls and I listened to it all day, particularly this […]