“Oh man,” my friend sighed into his spare ribs. “How could it be that not everyone understands that Barack Obama is, like, the coolest, smartest, most incredible president we’ve ever had?” “I know,” I said, helping myself to more beef and broccoli. “I know.” We were at a rundown restaurant in central Phoenix, the kind […]

Everyone in Phoenix has a John McCain story, it seems, but not many have Jon Kyl stories. I do. It was 1982 or so, and I was sitting in Mr. Kyl’s kitchen. You know how growing up, you had two kinds of friends — the friends whose parents let you call them by their first name, […]

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, […]

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 […]

I often feel that the responses to what I post here on GIAPH are far more eloquent than I can ever be, so in honor of the continuing effort to sift through the emotional rubble by Saturday’s events in Tucson, I decided to post some of the comments made to the post I wrote Sunday: Why Are […]

I let Annabelle listen to the news yesterday afternoon. Actually, I made her listen. She’s not one of those kids who begs for that kind of adult privilege, in fact she’s more likely to tell you to turn it off so she can listen to music. But she got that this was important. “Wait,” she […]

Even if you don’t live in Arizona, chances are you’ve heard about (or — cringe — seen) our governor’s performance in the first (and last, if her campaign has anything to do about it) gubernatorial debate earlier this week. Ray and Annabelle got busy with the iPhone last night, and look what landed in my […]

Going through Annabelle’s First Day of School papers this evening, suddenly I felt a little nauseous. There, amidst the cafeteria menu and the spelling list, was a sheet informing me that, according to Arizona law, fourth, fifth and sixth graders in public school will be required as of August 23 to recite a paragraph from […]

I’ll admit to some SB1070 fatigue. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know all about Arizona’s incredibly onerous anti-immigration law, signed this spring by our lovely governor. When she did it, I — along with most everyone I know (with some notable exceptions I’ll leave out so you don’t start hating people I […]

I have been thinking a lot about a young friend of mine. Let’s call her Rose. Rose is 11. She’s in sixth grade. She’s a totally kick-ass kid — I’ve had the privilege of watching her grow since she was in third grade, and so shy she wouldn’t look you in the eye. Now she’s […]