There are some people you expect to outlive common sense, modern technology, and possibly the federal government. Lady Jay Davis was one of those people. After all, when a person spends more than 45 years talking into a microphone, surviving radio management, changing formats, shrinking budgets, and the invention of consultants, you begin to suspect…

There are many great institutions in the American Republic. Congress is one, though it has not shown signs of life in years. The railroads were another, before they learned that arriving on time was bad for business. But among the noblest inventions of modern civilization is the police dog, an animal so well-educated that he…

There are few spectacles in modern civilization more entertaining than watching government officials congratulate themselves on a problem getting smaller while carefully avoiding the subject of why the problem exists at all. It reminds me of a man who proudly announces that his barn only burned halfway down this year, as though the fire itself…

Welcome to Fiction Story Writing 101.  On April 4, 2012, at 3:38 PM PDT, Reuters published an article titled “U.S. demands Sotheby’s give up ancient Cambodian statue.” U.S. prosecutors filed a civil lawsuit demanding that Sotheby’s forfeit a 10th-century sandstone statue known as the Duryodhana, allegedly looted from the Prasat Chen temple at Koh Ker…

After fifty years in broadcasting, I finally learned the great secret of modern communication: nobody is listening. Oh, they nod. They scroll. They interrupt before you finish the sentence. They ask questions not because they care about the answer, but because silence terrifies them like an unpaid electric bill. The world has become a room…

Well, now, it appears the future has arrived with all the grace of a drunken mule at a church social. The good folks in China have been treated to a preview of what’s to come when our mechanical betters decide they’ve had quite enough of our human nonsense. A child, bless his innocent heart, found…

The tattoo appeared on Liam’s forearm on his twenty-first birthday, as if he’d been born with it and it had simply decided to show up now. It was elegant, a small script in obsidian black that read: October 12, 2047. Heart failure, 11:42 PM. For fifteen years, Liam lived with that knowledge. He became a…

Everything I knew about the great wide world of hunting came through a television screen. Curt Gowdy’s American Sportsman might as well have been scripture to me. I watched those hunts the way other boys watched astronauts walking on the moon. Wild rivers in Alaska. Quail fields rolling beneath endless skies. Camps tucked against mountains…

I was sitting alone on my front porch this morning, engaged in the noble American tradition of doing absolutely nothing and calling it reflection. At my age, a man can sit motionless for twenty minutes and have folks wonder whether he is meditating, sleeping, or waiting for his warranty to expire. I was contemplating matters…

Buddy’s nose twitched before his eyes even opened. Something was wrong. The familiar, hearty aroma of his premium kibble was absent, replaced by a faint, unappetizing scent that whispered “fiber” and “nutritional balance.” He padded to his bowl and stared in horror. The rich, brown nuggets he knew and loved were gone, and in their…