“10–29 on a white Crown Vic heading Eastbound on 275, tag ‘Boy & Dog,’ repeat: ‘Boy & Dog.’ “No outstanding warrants. What’s the beef? “That’s just it. You’re not going to believe this, but riding shotgun is, well, some sort of steer with the biggest durn horns you ever saw…

We emerge into the light of the world as part of a pair, destined for separation. Umbilically bound to our mother, we bear innate dualism we spend our lives trying to recreate. In illness or mental distress, we feel most alone. It is an intimation of death, the ultimate parting…

Next week in Milwaukee, nearly 18,000 potential voters cram into the Fiserv Forum to hear a half-dozen GOP hopefuls duke it out onstage, with or without the 800-pound gorilla. Some in the crowd will be fresh from Alan Jackson concerts there. In one of his nostalgic hits, the country crooner…

Mixed martial arts cage matches of the rich and famous. Who knew it’s a thing? When 30 million Instagram users signed up on day one for Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s clone of Elon Musk’s Twitter, it was the digital equivalent of a slap. Take that, Muskovites! Name your second. What would…

We live in hype nation. The nation of the now. There have always been headlines. There has always been advertising. But there were core values. Cultural mainstays. Not anymore. In a social media world, you’re either viral or nonexistent. And virality is nearly instantaneous. Billie Eilish can whisper into her…

WTF. As a family newspaper, we won’t translate this acronym. I see it all too often in emails and texts. Let’s just say it expresses incredulity with an added hint of “U.” Doing my best to be PC — a blessedly brief exemplar and culprit — I stumble over ChatGPT…

“Everything dies baby that’s a fact, but maybe everything that dies some day comes back.” With our nation’s birthday looming, these words of Bruce Springsteen echo. They derive from his ode to “Atlantic City,” rather than his completely misunderstood “Born in the USA.” In both cases, the dichotomy between the…

“Everything is broken,” according to Bob Dylan. In the downbeat bearing of head and shoulders of many people I know, that brokenness is apparent. Between the micro and macro of our lives, from birth to aging and death, it echoes the demise of the “United” in States of America. The…

On his 80th birthday, singer Leonard Cohen celebrated with a cigarette. “It’s the right age to recommence,” he said. When he died two years later, I have no doubt those last, painful years were made a bit pleasanter by a nicotine fix and the reassuring rituals of smoking. He wasn’t…