It’s 100-plus degrees outside and we’re still a week away from Labor Day. But the slow migration of the sun in the southern sky tells me that summer is just about over.

And that can only mean one thing: Football, specifically the National Football League, is on its way.

This year, though, I’m feeling surprisingly ambivalent about it.

I’ve loved Sunday football from childhood. Dad sometimes would stop at the supermarket on our way home from Mass for a salami and some French bread and take it downstairs to the family room to catch the afternoon games. That is where I tried to be one of the boys, learning about Roman Gabriel, Merlin Olsen and Deacon Jones (we got a lot of Rams games) while enjoying a salami slice if I didn’t beg too much.

Generally, I still enjoy Sunday football, specifically on NFL Red Zone. For more than 15 years the seven hours of Red Zone’s live, “whip-around” (jumping among games) coverage of every touchdown has been the background music of my autumn Sunday afternoons. A good friend calls it the NPR of sports. I prefer Short Attention Span Football.

And I love HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” which this year follows training camp with the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. It gives football the full documentary treatment: Liev Schreiber’s soothing yet deeply authoritative voice narrates agonizing full-pad practice hits and cringey discussions among coaches and players. The camera moves from slow-mo close-ups of tight spiral passes and dripping sweat to the quiet of the summer sun rising over the Seahawks’ training facility on Lake Washington.

I cannot get enough.

However, I have yet to sign up for Red Zone this season. I know, there is still time. But something is giving me pause.

Is it the exaggerated violence of the players, some of whom have been charged with felonies and domestic abuse?

Or maybe the obnoxious, over-served and often-violent fanbases? Two drunk fans of the team now called the Commanders once threw up at their seats, barely missing our 10-year-old twins.

Or is it that late-stage capitalism has sunk its claws into college football to the point that our public universities are now free farm teams for billionaire NFL owners?

Good calls, but no.

It’s that the British Medical Journal last week published a study by Mass General Brigham, Boston University and the Concussion & CTE Foundation that found at least one in four NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had the degenerative brain disease known as CTE. It is a progressive neurological disease linked to repeated blows to the head and can only be determined by brain examinations after death. The study covered 878 players who appeared in at least one NFL game and died during that time frame.

That is a breathtaking statistic, yet it’s clearly low-balled given that 215 players whose brains were not evaluated after their deaths were nonetheless listed on death certificates as having died of a neurodegenerative disease.

But it’s not only the NFL’s problem. Researchers say college, high school and youth football share the blame. They have taken some steps in recent years to make the sport safer through fewer full-tackle practices, enhanced helmet safety technology, bans on certain tackling moves, and stricter concussion protocols.

But there is so much more to do and learn. And is it really entertaining to watch these players risk their lives like this? Why do I feel like I’m watching the 1970s version of Rollerball?

I know there are risks in everything — heck, I got a concussion umpiring behind the plate at a CYO girls’ softball game back in 1979. And now they are finding increased CTE risks in both soccer and hockey.

I reject the encase-’em-in-bubble-wrap ethos of many parents, yet I feel for those who have to confront all of this when their child wants to play youth or high school football. The allure of “Friday Night Lights” is strong. Team sports is an amazing experience. I’m just thankful we redirected our one football-crazy daughter into soccer, and later field hockey and softball.

Of course, she played goalie and catcher.

I grew up around football. I understand and enjoy the game. I loved playing it in the street at dusk, back when I could run and kick a ball without throwing my knee out.

Maybe I’m just getting older and starting to lose my stomach for the violence. The ambivalence this year is very, very strong. At any rate, I have another week or so to decide what my autumn Sundays will look like this year.

Maybe it’s time for a change.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! Here’s to hoping I might be able to do some very light hiking on Sundays if the weather is nice. Be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next time!

From my perch as a retiree living comfortably on my own, I’ve been thinking about the tradwife phenomenon. I seem to finally be writing about it just as it appears to have caught some blowback due to overexposure on social media and an RPG of a bestselling novel, Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.

“Tradwives” is a portmanteau (awesome word; look it up!) of traditional and wives for an internet subculture of women that promotes “traditional” gender roles. It has been embraced by conservative and right-wing groups aghast that women continue to defer marriage and childbearing today. The nerve.

Ah, the utter simplicity of traditional gender roles.

Tradwifery is nothing more than a great big sales job: Marriage and family will get you this. Everything else is a mistake. Don’t make mistakes!

And this sales job is done by women who are influencing countless younger women and girls who, unbelievably, are now questioning whether they should even be able to vote.

To vote.

Spoiler alert: Nothing in life is simple. You are meant to live, and learn from, a messy life. Stop apologizing. Go live and learn.

Take Ballerina Farm, probably the best-known of these online tradwife influencers. I even get sucked in by its website’s neutral-colored calm as the setting sun frames the rising sourdough on the kitchen counter. Tow-headed children in galoshes milk cows and gather chicken eggs while somehow looking more angelic than my own girls did in their Easter best.

Tradwifery conveys the idea of women doing this household work while leaving all decisionmaking to men. The problem is, the aspirational tradwife is doing the marketing and selling. She’s making everything from scratch and the business decisions. And it’s a full-time job. How many nannies, teachers, assistants and advisors does she have behind the scenes? And how do they bankroll it all?

That was the “tradwife” aesthetic that Burke so expertly zeroed in on in Yesteryear: Everything is bucolic, perfectly in order and fit for your consumption. Women are subservient to men.

Would you like some sourdough starter with your mother-daughter aprons order? Pay no attention to her clueless husband, her two nannies and the video producer, and that she sourced her ingredients during an early-morning Target run.

Other tradwives have adopted the 1950s-60s ethos: Mother at home with her children, keeping a gleamingly clean house for her hard-working husband, who walks through the door at 6 p.m. expecting a highball and dinner. Just like the movie Don’t Worry, Darling.

Pay no attention to the “mother’s little helper” that got her through the day.

More power to you if you are satisfied that your husband earns enough to get you that kind of lifestyle today. And if you manage to stay married and he doesn’t leave you for someone else, giving you no way to support yourself. Do you stop to wonder why the aspirational tradwives are all young and beautiful?

To be sure, my own Stanford-educated mother, rest her soul, was damn good at the Mom thing (side note: Sandra Day, before she was O’Connor, was in my Mom’s college yearbook).

Mom cut her chops raising my older siblings for 12 years before I came along. My Dad’s retail career brought home the bacon and paid for Catholic schools, but she contributed by taking on substitute teaching gigs. I remember seeing her in front of another class when I peeked through the window on the door separating my kindergarten classroom from hers. By 1969 when I was in second grade, she was working nearly full-time for an engineering firm. And she had her own office.

So it’s not surprising that when I was a naive high-schooler hooked on the handsome boyfriend du jour, Mom advised, “Go to college. Get your degree. Live your life. No one can take that from you.”

I never asked her who “no one” was. But her confidence told me I had abilities I didn’t know about.

So I lived my life.

I was a child of the ’60s, influenced by the media in the ’70s, single and career-focused in the ’80s. I settled into a two-income marriage in the ’90s.

By the oughts, my husband and I had three children from two “geriatric” pregnancies. We owned a house in the suburbs. The journalism and media relations careers I loved helped keep our family clothed, fed, educated and in soccer cleats and, to my eternal dismay, Barbies. At multiple points over those years, I was the major breadwinner.

Did I occasionally regret not being able to stay at home with our children as whatever a “full-time” mom is? Of course. And for a couple of years I figured out jobs where I could stay home for an extra day or two a week.

I’ll be honest: The most difficult moment in those years was leaving our oldest child, at 3 and a half months, with our amazing nanny and taking the Metro back to work as a reporter in downtown Washington, D.C.

But those moments of regret were quickly eclipsed by all the normal family-with-kids things that we did every day, every night as our girls begged for “just one more” book before bed, every weekend, every summer, every school vacation.

We just lived.

And you should, too. Unapologetically.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! Be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next time.

I certainly needed that five-day break from the four walls of my home and 117-degree heat when I flew to Baltimore recently to visit my daughter Ellen and her wife Rebecca, and to see Ellen graduate as an EMT from the Baltimore City Fire Academy.

Oh, and to eat some blue crabs. Which you don’t get in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

My visit took place during that rarest of times in the Mid-Atlantic: a nearly three-day July span of blue skies, 80-degree weather and surprisingly little humidity. In my 37 years of living there, I joked that the weather gods refused to allow us more than two beautiful days in a row. Interestingly, that thinking helped me endure both the gray gloom of winter and the hell’s sauna of summer.

And with few exceptions, I was proven right.

I stayed close to Baltimore mostly because my recuperating right knee kept me from driving. Ellen and Rebecca got me around, thank goodness: Every mile of Baltimore’s beltway appears to be under construction; those omnipresent concrete barriers frighten me.

Also, after 18 months away, I just can’t venture back into official Washington, D.C. I so loved working there – on Capitol Hill, downtown and around the White House and the federal agencies – that I don’t want to see the National Guard-occupied, fenced-up hellscape that my friends tell me it has become.

So Baltimore it was. The city’s fire department, founded as a volunteer force in 1797, has from those days what at best could be described as a colorful history that includes affiliations with the nativist Plug Uglies gangs and the Know-Nothing Riots of 1856. The City Council wrested control in 1859 and established a professional municipal service that today responds to 235,000 emergency calls each year. The 2004 movie Ladder 49 was shot in Baltimore.

Rebecca and I snagged front-row seats at the Fire Academy graduation ceremony at the academy offices in the Rosedale section of the city. Top Fire Department brass and a City Council member joined a packed hall of the graduates’ families and friends in celebrating the call of public service and the graduates’ hard work.

As one speaker observed, the new EMTs and paramedics must be at their best because people will need them on the worst days of their lives.

It was a perfect bookend for Ellen, who from 2 years old would not allow me to shop at our local supermarket until I let her visit the fire station next door. If I said no, she would climb the wall to walk over there herself. God, she moved fast. I lost count of how many of those plastic child-sized helmets we found around the house and in the back seat of the car over the years.

And it was great seeing my good friend Diane, a fellow federal retiree who tried to teach me to be nice to IT staff, and who was instrumental in helping Ellen in her quest to become an EMT.

Crabs? Of course! We found a locals’ restaurant with a beach at a bayside marina deep in the eastern suburbs, full of delicacies like sweet, meaty crab cakes and deep-fried asparagus. And the Baltimore Museum of Art, which I haven’t seen in years, did not disappoint with its Matisse exhibits and outdoor space for lunch in perfect weather.

Heaven was cracking crabs at Crabtowne in Glen Burnie, where the beers are huge and the ’80s-era arcade, complete with pinball machines and Ms. Pac-Man, is next to the far end of the bar.

Fun fact: I only know how to properly crack crabs because I learned from friends of my late husband. They just happened to be the spies who were caught working for Cuba back in 2009. For the record, we had no idea what they were doing.

So now, the world is back in balance: Ellen is on duty at her fire station, next door to the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower just blocks from Oriole Park. And it has one of those poles that firefighters slide down.

Me? I satisfied my jones for crabs. And I’m back in Phoenix, where the mercury has already topped 115 and I’m finally driving again so I can get to physical therapy (torture) twice a week.

It’s a dry heat though.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! Be kind, have fun and we’ll see you next time!

If all the influencers now populating my social media algorithms have it right, we are in the midst of the Barbault Basket, a once-in-a-lifetime astrological alignment of *checks notes* Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto as they form a geometric basket shape in the sky.

It’s named for the French astrologer who used long-term planetary cycles and their positions to predict major world events. He died in 2019 but predicted a worldwide disruption for 2020. That turned out to be COVID. And he also predicted this 2026 cycle as the most positive cycle of the century. Apparently, this means that we are in for spiritual awakening, something called “collective innovation,” and a relaunch of civilization.

Hunh. I thought Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore. And I’m old enough to remember The Age of Aquarius.

But what’s not to like? Given the condition of our planet, our lives and, frankly, our sclerotic, aging and corrupt leadership right now, who could possibly be against a relaunch of civilization?

I know. *Waves hands by ears* Woo woo.

But remember, I’m 90 minutes from Sedona and its famous vortexes. And confession time: Two years ago I had my Tarot cards read there. If you can’t get caught up in the Sedona-ness of it all, why go?

For the record, the tarot reader said I should move to Prescott, not Phoenix. Uh huh.

I have a lot of friends and some family members who take astrology very seriously. Others are religious and shun any mention of this kind of spirituality. I think of my own Mom in particular, a Catholic convert who had zero patience for astrology and “luck.” She and my Dad got married on Friday the 13th and stayed married until her death 43 years later. Then there are the friends and family who think religion is also “woo woo.”

I’ve been in all three camps at different points in my life. But something keeps gnawing at me when I think of how, as children, we were taught to pray. The priests and nuns, and my parents, cautioned that God would give us what we needed, not necessarily what we were asking for — and would not necessarily do it when we wanted it done. As my Dad said, “All things come to those who wait.”

That cast a pall over some Christmases.

But when you put it like that, prayer sounds an awful lot like meditation and manifestation.

Woo woo! Get me my crystals! No, really. I do have some. I also have a Rosary.

Or maybe it’s just thinking good thoughts. Hoping for the best. Or just putting out good vibes. Ah, the power of positive thinking. I’ve always been an optimist at heart.

At any rate, all this basket talk had me thinking that I, finally nearing the end of my forced in-home recuperation from full knee replacement surgery, might be in line for my own awakening, innovation and relaunch.

But I just did that 18 months ago, when I retired and moved across the country after 37 years in Washington, D.C. That relaunch was exhausting — and rewarding. I’m feeling pretty good these days, so maybe it’s already happened, or it’s tied to my current relationship, or maybe it involves being more healthy with new knees and a renewed taste for adventures.

Who knows? Let’s just say I’m sending good vibes into the ether by meditating, manifesting and praying. Why limit myself?

Woo woo!

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog post. I have wanted to use the word “sclerotic” for years. In any language, I’m sending good vibes to everyone for a peaceful remainder of the summer. Be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next time.

Settle in. This one’s long!

Ten days laid up with a painful post-operative rebuilt knee and a painkiller-induced fuzzy head required me to dig deep for a way to occupy my time.

So I turned to something I haven’t seen in 20-plus years: The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008).

Oh, I’ve got books. But my post-surgery brain cannot handle them. So my partner Brian and I hunkered down to binge all five seasons of that sweeping tale of the early-aughts Baltimore drug trade and the police, politicians and regular people caught up in it.

So, does The Wire still resonate?

Yes. While we are in a different country today than we were before Barack Obama was elected president, human nature remains the same.

I lived in the Baltimore-D.C. region for 37 years. I love Baltimore. And I’m a huge Wire fan. HBO ran those five seasons over seven years. I got depressed every Sunday when the show’s cello-heavy outro music, “The Fall,” would kick in and I’d have to wait a full week before I could find out what happened next.

Bingeing is a great way to follow a story so masterfully mapped out ahead of time. David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter who created the series, is a genius.

I binged it in seven days.

But doing so 20-plus years after it originally came out changed my experience with the show significantly.

First,it allowed me to see the subtle shifts in storylines ahead of time. Bunny Colvin, the police major who launched the unsanctioned “Hamsterdam” drug legalization experiment in season 3? He popped up toward the end of season 2’s story on the stevedores at the port.

Next, characters are more sharply drawn and their repetitive actions carry more weight when they evolve over seven days instead of seven years.

For instance, Detective Jimmy McNulty, who passes for the lead character in this ensemble-driven drama, was a flawed (and handsome, I’ll admit) hero 20 years ago. Now? A boring, narcissistic drunk whose redemption arc left me cold.

Omar, the cold-blooded killer who does not harm taxpaying citizens, whistles Farmer in the Dell and has a yen for Honey Nut Cheerios, was among the first openly gay gangsters on TV. He is more frightening when you watch him kill multiple times over the course of your own day.

Yet I would still kill to work in a newsroom where Gus Haynes is city editor.

And let us all be thankful that The Wire gave America Idris Elba, as the drug empire business brain Stringer Bell.

I also spent time looking for cameos, too many to mention but here are a few: the late saxophonist/E Street Band member Clarence Clemons; mystery writer and former Baltimore Sun reporter Laura Lippman; the late Richard Belzer as his Homicide: Life on the Street character; former Maryland Gov. Robert Erlich (R); and Simon himself.

The humor holds up, as does my favorite Easter egg: McNulty, portrayed as a Baltimore native, goes undercover as a British tourist at a brothel. The actor who plays him, Dominic West, is British. It is all very meta.

There are other wonderful touches. For instance, Baltimore accents on a police deputy and some middle school teachers are thick enough to scoop, like ice cream. The story of the middle-school boys from season 4 has elements of the movie Stand By Me. And who can forget a very young Michael B. Jordan and his gut-wrenching turn as a child in public housing in season 1.

There are things that grate, like the subordinate role of women in this testosterone-heavy show.

The only woman who doesn’t owe her position to her relationship with a man is City Council President Nerese Campbell. However, I’ll tip my hat to Detective Shakima Greggs, a stalwart cop who helps put an end to McNulty’s ridiculous serial killer scheme.

Even the most competent State’s Attorney ever, Rhonda Perlman, gets sidelined. She came on the scene for courtroom work in season 1 but – surprise! – turned out to be the partner in the affair that broke McNulty’s marriage. Through continued work with the squad, she settles into a relationship with Lieutenant Cedric Daniels. By the end of the series, she’s finally a judge. But on her first day she has to recuse herself from a case because Daniels, now a lawyer, is representing the defendant. The little grin between the two of them was not “cute.”

Now, for the final season’s Baltimore Sun storyline.

Television often gets newspaper reporters wrong. But this show, which follows reporters and editors at the Sun trying to work in the face of buyouts and layoffs, reflects Simon’s own frustrations at the Sun. And it got me wistful for newsrooms and the reporter-editor banter that kept us all on our toes. I will note that I never once saw a reporter make anything up in the way it was portrayed in season 5.

The show acknowledges that the news business is shrinking due to “free content” on the internet. But we know now that the newspaper owners dropped the ball by allowing the “free content” onto the internet in the first place. Meanwhile, social media and political divisions teamed up to create a distrustful public, much of which wants nothing to do with news.

The HL Menken quote at the entrance of the Sun offices was a nice touch. But I got a lump in my throat when, at the edge of the shot of a reporter leaving the offices of The Washington Post, you see a wall of photos of its pre-Bezos owners, reporters and editors.

How times have changed.

The lesson of The Wire: The sun rises and sets. Life goes on. And the new boss is the same as the old boss.

So I’m off the heavy painkillers and I cleaned the cobwebs out of the corners of my brain. I now have my nose in A History of Resistance in the United States by public historian Tad Stoermer.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my really long blog post! I haven’t watched this much television in years. I’m glad to be off it. Be kind, have fun and we’ll see you next time!

Well, it’s hot outside.

Thanks, Captain Obvious.

As I write this, Phoenix is staring down the barrel of 105-115 degrees every day for the next two weeks, and most likely for the next three months. All we can do is hope that Monsoon Season, which began June 15, is good to us.

May it rain cats and dogs here this summer!

Now, I’m not complaining about the heat. I chose Phoenix with eyes wide open. I love it here.

But I’m sad that due to the heat, I’ve already taken my last Phoenix Mountain Preserve hike for the season. On June 9, I got up at 5:30 a.m. to get to the trail by 6 a.m. so I could be out of the heat before 10 a.m. And it was still pretty hot.

It also means I’m missing my favorite Saguaro cactus blooms. Now this is based solely upon one year of experience, but it appears the blooms are a little late this year. I only started seeing the otherworldly green shoots, reminiscent of the eye stalks on the Daleks in Doctor Who, poking out of some cacti a month ago. And on that last hike, I caught some faraway views of those waxy-looking white blossoms I love.

To my surprise, I got better views of the blooms through furtive glances at cacti growing on the hillsides next to I-17 on my way to and from Flagstaff. And I say furtive because I was driving alone and the so-called “speed limit” is 75. And this being Arizona, you never know what the guy passing you at 90 in the jacked-up truck is going to do next.

But still, they made me smile.

And until last week, I expected to be hiking elsewhere this summer – around Flagstaff and in New Mexico, for example. My gear, including three pairs of clean hiking socks, is always at the ready in the back of my SUV.

But that will have to wait. I’m scheduled for my first of two full-knee replacement surgeries on Friday, coming at least six full months earlier than anticipated. My surgeon had been fully booked through the end of this year, so I was preparing for surgery in early 2027. But when I got a call last week that a slot had opened, I jumped to fill it.

Depending on when I have the second knee replaced, I might be back hiking amid the cacti around Phoenix in the fall. Or not. I see lots of physical therapy in my future. But over the past year I’ve learned that navigating the uneven and frequently rocky paths along my favorite trail is good for my balance. And hiking has helped improve my strength to the point that my surgeon expressed amazement at my ability to walk on my arthritic, cartilage-starved knees.

But arthritis has required me to hike a lot slower than most people. And that makes me a prime target for unsolicited offers of help or advice along the route.

Like this, from one gentleman (I’m trying to be polite):

“You OK? You got enough water on you? You’ll need it,” he said as he strode uphill while I, hunched over, was feeling around for good spots to plant my hiking poles so I could negotiate a steep drop on the downhill path.

“I’m fine, thanks,” I responded. “You OK? You got enough water?”

Silence.

I noiselessly mimed the “Duh” I was going to dismiss him with. Somewhere, Mom is smiling at my restraint.

Now, I appreciate people being kind, if that’s what they’re doing. What I cannot abide is condescension from someone who sees an aging, short blonde lady hiking by herself, leaning on her poles to carefully feel her way down a slope and thinks, “She can’t handle the hike! Maybe she forgot to pack water!”

In the middle of the Sonoran Desert. Right.

I’m an Aries. The best way to get me to do something is to tell me I cannot, or should not, do it. And I will glare at you the entire time it takes me to do it.

And how did that guy think I got up that hill, anyway? I gritted my teeth as my residual anger fueled a faster hike on my way back to the car. That, of course, laid me up for the rest of the day.

Know this: If I need help, I most certainly will ask for it. And this summer will probably require doing so.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! Hope your summer is going well, wherever you are. Be kind (even if someone is talking down to you), have fun, and we’ll see you next time!

I didn’t want to be roadkill on the Mother Road. Or even the Interstate a mile or so south of it.

But given the crazy drivers I have unfortunately become too used to here in Arizona, it was a close call.

The Mother Road, for those who have not been in and around the Southwest lately, is Route 66. It’s the famed L.A.-to-Chicago highway of the Joads, of the irritatingly kitschy Bobby Troup song that runs on a loop in my head, and of mid-century car culture. Route 66 is celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year.

I know Route 66 because I spent nearly four years at Northern Arizona University, perched amid the Ponderosa pine between Route 66 and its replacement, Interstate 40, as they wind through Flagstaff.

So when we wanted to celebrate Route 66’s 100^th birthday, I wasn’t all that interested in celebrating in Flagstaff. I pretty much know every inch of the road in town, from the traffic jams at the curve under the train tracks going into downtown to The Dog Haus, formerly Der Weinerschnitzel, in East Flagstaff. That, not Winslow, was where the girl, my Lord, in the flatbed Ford really slowed her roll for Jackson Browne in the Eagles’ Take It Easy.

Instead, we headed 33 miles west, to Williams, where we quickly found ourselves in the middle of a two-day car show that completely took over its historic downtown. We were bumper-to-bumper while crowds darted in front of us to gander at the polished Corvettes and refurbished older cars. Others sat in folding chairs under storefront shade.

I get car culture – Route 66 helped create, and build, it. I love a good road trip, preferably in a convertible with cranked-up ’70s tunes. Like Thelma and Louise, hold the guns. But I’ll leave standing around looking under the hoods to the gearheads.

Once we extricated ourselves from the car show, we ventured further west to Seligman. The genius, though, was getting off I-40 and taking Route 66, the start of the longest stretch of drivable Route 66 in the country.

On this part of 66, you’re traversing rolling brown hills of scrubby high desert with rocky outcrops and some amazing views. The road is freshly paved and painted, though unsuitable for Arizona’s speed demons. At times we passed what appeared to be older, blocked-off road cuts. And we even got some freshly painted Burma Shave ads.

“The man who drives…when he’s been drinking…depends on you…to do the thinking. Burma Shave.”

At first glance, Seligman appears to be another half-forgotten yet incredibly kitschy wide spot on a rural road. My first thought was the movie Cars. And hold that thought.

Seligman bills itself as the “birthplace of Historic Route 66.” The word “historic” does some heavy lifting because the actual birthplace of Route 66 is Springfield, Mo.

Yet Seligman owes that designation to Angel Delgadillo, the town barber who, after I-40 bypassed Seligman in the 1980s, spearheaded the Route 66 preservation movement. Delgadillo and Seligman helped inspire the town of Radiator Springs in the movie Cars, which I have personally seen more times than I want to admit.

Kachowww!

Delgadillo is 99 now. He retired four years ago, but the overstuffed gift store he and his wife, Vilma, own is still going strong. His daughter says he remains active making bird houses to help raise money for projects to highlight Seligman, including the big signs just outside of town.

After a quick bite of chicken wings and fries at the quirky but delicious Roadkill Café (“You kill it, we grill it!”), we headed back to Flagstaff. Unfortunately for us, that meant heading back up the hill on I-40 with a lot of trucks. At least four of the truck drivers appeared to have decided that it was a great idea to trade places in the left lane on a heavily traveled Saturday afternoon. Going uphill.

That left us in a parade of cars, unable to pass. It felt like being in the pack at the Indianapolis 500, with cars either jockeying for position amid the trucks and trying not to hit each other, or staying back to take the hill at 35 miles per hour. Either way, it was harrowing. I shut my eyes for most of it. Thank goodness I wasn’t driving. I lost my nerve for that kind of crap years ago.

Who was driving? My partner in both crime and adventure, Brian Rackham. He’s got nerves of steel, for which I am thankful. I heaved a sigh of relief when we finally lost the truckers on the other side of Williams. Remember, the speed limit in Arizona is a mere suggestion.

Those Ponderosa pines never looked so good.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! It’s fun having another adventure to kick off the summer. Now, if we can just get a little bit of rain, that would make the summer complete. Be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next time!

I’ve been going “home” for family visits now for more than 45 years. Each time – through college and young adulthood, with kids in tow in my 40s and 50s, and now, as a gracefully aging retiree – has its memories.

“Home” in this context is Reno, Nev., where I grew up as No. 6 of seven children (my Star Trek: Next Generation name should be Six-of-Seven). Yet because the age gap between me and my next oldest siblings is five years, I once called myself the eldest of my parents’ second family. That joke fell flat when confused friends started asking about stepbrothers and -sisters and extended family that did not exist.

Going back to Reno for me has often been fraught with reconciling my adult self with the 14-year-old little sister that I become, at least in my mind, when I’m there. It’s difficult sometimes to get over growing up in the shadow of five older siblings who gave me five high bars that I never quite felt I could live up to.

I know. It’s not 1975 anymore. Time marches on. I was married for 30 years and have three amazing adult children of my own, and I retired 17 months ago from a successful and really fun media career.

I’ll take your bars and raise you mine.

I recall living in nearby Carson City for six months in 1985 to cover the Nevada Legislature for the Las Vegas Sun. I was finally close enough to see my family for Sunday dinners and babysit as the “fun aunt” when anyone needed help. It felt good. Familiar.

In between chasing after legislators and the governor all day, those six months also allowed me to immerse myself in all things Mark Twain.

He’s everywhere in Northern Nevada. As Samuel Clemens, he followed his brother to Nevada and was a reporter and editor for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise from 1862 to 1865. That is considered the time when he found his writing voice and became Mark Twain. He also covered the Nevada Legislature, and legend has it he helped institute the venerable tradition of “Third House,” best described as a skit show where reporters made savage fun of lawmakers.

For the record, in 1985 I was 24 and gleefully participated in “Third House.” I played a teacher moonlighting as a prostitute because the Legislature voted down their pay raises. Or something like that. Hey, it was the ’80s, OK? And thank God there’s no video.

All these 40-plus years later I remain a “Twainiac.” Among my favorite of Twain’s books is Roughing It, a novelized memoir about his youthful adventures through the untamed Wild West, including, interestingly, Hawaii. For obvious reasons, I love the part where he and a friend, Johnny K, “the young son of an Ohio nabob,” hike to Lake Tahoe to enjoy the beauty they had heard so much about. But they end up setting fire to some of the forest surrounding the lake, watching it from the safety of a boat. Not much is known about Johnny K. But according to family lore his last name was Kinney, and we O’Driscolls are somehow related to him.

And remember, with Mark Twain, you’re never sure how much of what you just read was real.

I recently returned from a trip to Reno to celebrate the 70^th birthday of one of my brothers. The few days there took us to Lake Tahoe and, because our return flight was delayed, a quick trip to Virginia City. The massive blue of Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada around it always lower my heart rate; though I chuckle uneasily thinking of Mark Twain and Johnny K and the forest going up in flames. And Virginia City was much bigger and actually nicer than I remembered, mostly because I can now compare it to Deadwood, Tombstone and Jerome, which are smaller and a little rougher around the edges.

So, finally, yes, you can go home again. Reno has changed as much as I have, though it still only takes 15 minutes or so to get around. I keep in touch with high school friends who live there. And Reno’s skyline views remain gorgeous all these decades later.

And amazingly, all my siblings are still around – as we range from 77 to 63, we’re a little older and a lot grayer, but we still tell funny stories and listen to the Beach Boys. Five of us made it to the birthday celebration and the (of course, we’re O’Driscolls!) afterparty.

And this time, I almost didn’t mind feeling 14, or even 24. I guess I’ve finally grown up after all.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! One of my daughters pointed out to me that being No. 6 of 7 makes me cool to whatever Gen Z-ers still pay attention to the “six-seven” fad. Is that still a thing? Asking for a friend. Be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next time!

I had the honor this past week to address one of the four commencement ceremonies at my alma mater, Northern Arizona University.

In a sense, it was my own commencement. In December 1982, I took my last final exam, scraped the snow off my teal blue 1977 Buick Skylark, packed it to the gills and headed across the desert to my first newspaper job at the Las Cruces (N.M.) Sun-News – whose editors somehow held that job for me for six weeks. I never walked during that commencement exercise.

I’ve been to many graduation ceremonies over the years – including my oldest daughter’s graduation from the University of Minnesota in 2018 – but nothing quite prepared me for the up-close, very personal view of unbridled joy and relief that I got from the stage.

And I couldn’t help but think of how different, yet in some ways similar, conditions were for graduates 44 years ago and how they are now.

I’ll address this through the prism of the business I know most about: Media. But I’ll first note that when I graduated, we were at the start of a steady, Reagan-era increase in the cost of a college education that continues, unabated, today.

Back then, we graduates were warned about the impending death knell of newspapers. Readership was down, TV news was the future, and you bought USA Today from street racks that looked like televisions. And regardless of my experience, newspapers were starting to thin their reporter ranks. I was privileged to have a job, even as the managing editor looked over his glasses during my interview and asked if I were really planning to be a reporter, or would I be going off with my boyfriend to “find myself” after a few weeks.

For the record, I said “No.” But I filed this under Who-The-F*@k-Are-You. And I kept my distance from him for the next year.

Anyone getting a question like that today would rightly go straight to HR.

Graduates today – particularly those trying to get into the media business – find a fractured and not-very-welcome landscape that changes under their feet within minutes. For that, we give thanks to AI, social media and an economy that chases the next quarter’s earnings and trends instead of planning for the future. Many are saddled with huge student loans that will take forever to pay off. They are post-COVID, the product of a country that somehow shuns expertise in favor of “vibes” and news in favor of entertainment. And a growing chorus is questioning the value not only of higher education, but education in general.

Meanwhile, if you read studies and believe science, today’s graduates represent the beginning of the end of a baby boom that signals a significant decline in college attendance in the coming years.

I don’t purport to have any answers about what’s ahead for these new graduates – I’m retired but I pay very close attention to the news business. And I’m not an expert on what’s ahead for universities like NAU, which like its bigger siblings Arizona State University and the University of Arizona is bracing for legislatively mandated budget cuts. But as the incoming president of the NAU Alumni Association, I am paying very close attention to all that.

I sat on the stage at the NAU commencement last week with Arizona Board of Regents President Doug Goodyear, taking notice of everything as the graduates accepted their diplomas and shook hands with university leaders. We saw the delight on their faces and the undeniable creativity of their decorated caps and gowns. We heard the celebratory cheers from friends and family in the audience. And we laughed along with the unabashed joy of NAU President Jose Luis Cruz-Rivera as he led the procession off the stage to Bad Bunny’s “Tití Me Preguntó.” My sincere apologies for mangling that.

This was a special graduation. In a sense, it was mine, too. And to all this year’s NAU graduates, it was a privilege to enjoy every minute of it.

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Thank you for reading and/or listening to my blog! To everyone taking that first step into the next chapter of your life, congratulations, and all my best! To everyone: Be kind, don’t forget to have fun, and we’ll see you next time!

The mushrooming Dianna Russini-Mike Vrabel scandal has resurrected in me some deep-rooted fears about journalism and the women who have helped advance the field over the past 50 years.

A recap: Dianna Russini was the talented and well-compensated sports reporter – ahem, National Football League “Insider” – for The Athletic. It appears she had a years-long relationship with Mike Vrabel, who this past year took the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl in his first year as head coach. Both are married to other people.

There were photos splashed across the tabloids, denials that only prompted more questions, and expressions of shock. The Athletic announced an investigation. Then there were reports of other Athletic journalists’ anger when the editor stood up for Russini. Amid the rising cacophony, she resigned.

Vrabel and the Patriots were strangely quiet until he made a non-apology, and later, in an awkward excuse for a news conference, said he would miss part of the NFL Draft to seek counseling. Yet he never quite admitted that anything happened, even in the face of growing evidence.

No accountability from Vrabel. And neither the NFL nor the Patriots are investigating for any violations of the league’s personal conduct policy.

Bottom line: He’s still employed.

Ugh. Enough.

Yes, we’ve all seen reporters have relationships with their sources – Olivia Nuzzi and RFK Jr., anyone? Question: Who’s now a member of the President’s Cabinet, and who lost her high-profile magazine job and is now navigating the fallout from this?

I’ll wait. And ask: Why on earth would anybody do this?

Russini was a sports reporter – excuse me, “Insider” – who happens to be a woman and is damn good in a male-dominated field. Her articles and her Scoop City podcast provided a refreshing perspective on a sport I like. Plus, she could mix it up with anyone, including co-host and former NFL quarterback Chase Daniel.

I fear that women in any area of journalism, particularly in this time of “fake news” and bro-heavy sports opinions, are automatically looked down upon because someone will always be wondering if that reporter slept her way to where she is. It was that way decades ago, and I can feel it creeping back. My worry is the Russini-Vrabel scandal has set women in sports journalism back more than a couple of decades.

Next, our insatiable appetite for the latest news of any kind – mostly sports, and for that I am as guilty as the next person – has spawned a 24/7, multi-platform news cycle that generously rewards shock, awe and “insider” access.

That leads me to: What the hell is an “NFL Insider,” anyway? My understanding is that it sits in the blurry line dividing reporting from insider knowledge based on a web of sources within the league that gives you advance knowledge of business transactions and team insight.

Who am I to judge, but that still sounds like reporting.

But I don’t know if that distinction means an “insider” must follow journalistic ethics requirements or what. Interestingly, another favorite sports podcast, The Sports Gossip Show (hosted by two women), recounted that another media outlet’s “NFL Insider” years ago sent a full draft of his article to an NFL team executive for review, addressing the executive as “Mr. Editor.”

That’s a journalistic firing offense. Yet he is still employed.

As the hosts of Sports Gossip so aptly said, if this is a job that you can only do if you’re a man, then the real problem is the job.

Finally, 16 months ago I finished a 40-year career in journalism and media relations. A good part of my media relations work involved advising high-level business and government executives on crisis communications.

Russini and Vrabel, and the Patriots organization, are reported to have consulted with crisis communications specialists. But by the looks of it, either those specialists are bad at their jobs, or more likely, their counsel was simply disregarded. The lying, the obfuscation, the oddly worded statements that opened the door for more questions and speculation – they were all preventable and only served to make this sordid situation the month-long saga it has become.

Believe me: You can’t fool everyone. If you are lying, you will be found out. Period.

Every reporter knows that.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! I know I’m long again, but you may have noticed I’m saying it’s 500-ish words. And I’m sticking to it. Be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next time!

For far too long, I had no idea what Bisbee, Arizona, was. I’d figured it for a ghost town, a far southeastern Arizona copper mining outpost from the last century. The only thing I knew was that Lynn Bracken, the Veronica Lake-lookalike played by Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential, came from Bisbee, and by the end of the movie was on her way back home.

Now I know better. Bisbee is a little kick-in-the-pants town that, yes, has its roots firmly in a compelling but tragic copper mining history, but now is full of creative souls and fun places to explore. And I hear its Pride celebration is not to be missed.

Bisbee is not quite a two-hour drive from Tucson through high desert full of mesquite, palo verde and yucca. It’s near historic Tombstone, and not far from the popular Sonoita wine-growing region of the state.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, having spent most of my Arizona-centric time in and around Flagstaff and Phoenix. Like any other newbie, I thought it would be flat, hot and dry.

Actually, Bisbee is nestled in the high desert mountains, with steep hills and frighteningly narrow streets. It was quite pleasant for mid-March, even as Phoenix was roasting in summer-like weather. And we had quite an overnight thunderstorm while we were there.

But Bisbee really is charming. It’s got colorful, art-lined steps to get you from one street to the next. A truck that seemed to be permanently parked near a church was full of fun characters and artwork. And the buildings that hug the main drag give it a big city feel. I even saw evidence that at one time both JC Penney and, even closer to my heart, FW Woolworth, had stores there.

Bisbee is the “Queen of the Copper Camps,” from which the corporation formerly known as Phelps Dodge extracted more than 8 billion pounds of copper until it shuttered 50 years ago. The yawning expanse of the Lavender Mine, just south of downtown, is where they did much of that work. By 1910, Bisbee was the largest city in Arizona with 25,000 residents. Some 5,000 miners worked in the hard rock mines.

Yet things turned just seven years later, in a way that eerily rhymes today. As the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, half of those miners went on strike. On July 12, 1917, a posse of 2,000 men loyal to the company rounded up 1,300 strikers, mostly from Southern Europe and Mexico, and marched them to a nearby baseball field where they were packed into train boxcars and “deported” at gunpoint to the desert of southern New Mexico, ordered never to return to Arizona.

How the company got away with doing that to people and crossing states lines is, simply, mystifying. I have so many questions!

The elegant former Phelps Dodge headquarters, right in the middle of downtown Bisbee, is now home to the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum. It has a lovely and ornately paneled executive meeting room on one side; the day we were there, it housed a private turquoise jewelry sale that made me salivate but was too rich for my pocketbook.

The museum provides many opportunities to learn all about life in Bisbee at the turn of the last century – the surprising diversity of its residents, the influence of the mining industry and how hard rock mining turned into strip mining, and that damn “deportation” event that I cannot get out of my head.

Directly behind the museum and up some stairs (of course) and across Howell Avenue is the beautiful yet fading Copper Queen Hotel, opened in 1902, that was home for the Phelps Dodge executives. It’s got lovely old flourishes befitting those titans of industry but is showing its age: The elevator wasn’t working (oh, my knees!) and the bar and restaurant were closed. As in: Closed.

Pro tip: Don’t go to Bisbee on Mondays. A lot of the town isn’t open. On the bright side, we’re not exactly painting the town red anyway.

But we did find Bisbee’s Table, a fun American bar and restaurant with a solid burger and pizza game in what looked like an old Sears store-turned-tiny-shopping-mall across the street from the museum. In the entryway outside the restaurant is a cigarette machine refashioned into a vending machine sponsored by the Bisbee Arts Commission. For $20 (half to the Arts Commission, half to the artist) you get a brightly colored cigarette box containing a surprise piece of art. Of course, I bit and was promptly rewarded with lovely star-shaped ceramic earrings by Virginia Pfau Thompson.

The next day, we happened upon the Bisbee Breakfast Club tucked away on Erie Street south of the Lavender Mine, lined with the old-timey auto and motorcycle shops, filling stations, storefronts and rusted versions of cars and trucks that you’d find in one of those 1960s bike-gang-invading-small-town movies. Indeed, the morning we were there, a group of 20 or so Porsche owners were finishing their breakfasts before parading their vehicles, representing a variety of vintages and colors, up and down the street.

The Bisbee Breakfast Club is exactly what you would expect: A lively little greasy spoon with expansive breakfast offerings and damn good coffee. I found the bacon especially delicious and am always game for sourdough toast. And, they have several locations in southern Arizona, including two in exurban Phoenix. Time for breakfast!

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! I know this went really long (again). But later this week I turn 65, so I can do what I want during my birthday week. Maybe, though, I’ll re-think that 500-word business up top. Oh well. Be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next time!

I have been thinking lately about how my kids and I used to roll our eyes when my late husband, their father, would rant about Jeffrey Epstein and his web of influence, ultra-rich associates, corruption, global political dealings, and the mountains of evidence that he led a human trafficking ring.

This all started back in 2019, when Epstein was arrested, charged, and died mysteriously in his New York jail cell while his partner, Ghislane Maxwell, disappeared and went on the lam.

Perry, my husband, died in 2022, but not before the Epstein case became for him what I can only call an obsession. A politico with an uncanny ability to analyze patterns in people and events, Perry saw the Epstein case as an opportunity to see where politics, money, power and sex crossed paths at the highest levels. And he would talk about it with anyone who would listen.

Through three hospitalizations in the last 18 months of his life, Perry made sure that I added the New York Post to his daily delivery of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post. The New York Post, he said, had the best Epstein coverage. And he was old school: He clipped every story about Epstein and Maxwell, filing them away for future reference.

As if he were going to crack the case himself.

Over the past year, the evidence in the Epstein case has expanded significantly, and frighteningly. Women, abused and raped by Epstein and his clients as teenagers, have courageously gone public with heartbreaking testimony.

A reluctant Congress pressured the Department of Justice to make public documents from the Epstein files to shed more light on what went on. Though much is curiously redacted, we have learned quite a bit. Our own president gets many mentions in those files.

Members of royalty, heads of foreign governments, CEOs, celebrities, university presidents and banking executives have been dodging questions or stepped down because of their involvement with Epstein.

Countries that are not the United States are looking into criminal charges involving some of them. Three giant banks have reached multi-million-dollar settlements with Epstein’s victims.

The New Mexico Legislature is conducting a long-awaited investigation into Epstein’s former Zorro Ranch amid reports of deals with former state officials and assertions that some girls were beaten, died and buried there. Early reporting indicates no evidence of bodies.

Yet for all that, we’re getting crickets from official Washington, D.C.

I’ll admit to getting a little obsessed with the Epstein case myself, what with the news coverage of the victims’ unflinching testimony, and the publication last year of the best-selling Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Guiffre, which recounts her time as a sex slave to Epstein’s and Maxwell’s wealthy clients. Guiffre took her own life a year ago.

As I’ve learned more about Epstein, I can feel the tug of Perry’s threads and where they might lead. I’m no conspiracy theorist, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But I also do not believe in coincidences.

A month or so ago, I read about the 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut, which centers on a sex cult and human trafficking, and its similarities to Epstein. I vaguely remembered it as Stanley Kubrick’s nearly impenetrable Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman vehicle that was laughed at for depicting an orgy in the cover-up-the-naughty-bits way that Austin Powers did.

But then I sat down to watch it. And with the hindsight of Epstein, I found it unnerving. Especially when I learned that Kubrick died in his sleep before its release.

Then I did a re-watch of the first season of the hit HBO series, True Detective – you know, the one with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and time-is-a-flat-circle. The story, though convoluted, involves a sex cult and human trafficking. They get the bad guy in the end, but over a cigarette under the stars, they acknowledge there is more out there.

And there is. There is certainly more to come in the Epstein case. But I’ve also learned in the past week about the problem of human trafficking in Arizona. And one detail stopped me in my tracks: Five years ago, police found trafficked 15-year-old girls walking the streets west of downtown Phoenix. Today, those girls are 12 and 13 years old.

That’s middle school, people.

I used to joke that success as a mother meant my kids got out of high school alive. Human trafficking was not what I had in mind.

Just as I never suspected we would see the Epstein matter break out into this sprawling, frightening mess. I just hope we have the fortitude to see it through to the end.

Perry, wherever you are, you were on to something. And sorry for all the eye rolls.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! Yeah, we went long this time. Oh well. Be sure to be kind and have fun, and we’ll see you next time.

I’m such a sucker for Hollywood Westerns.

It’s likely due to the many Western TV shows and old movies we used to watch as kids. And I grew up near both the real ghost town of Virginia City and the fictionalized Ponderosa Ranch of the Bonanza TV show, so that probably had something to do with it. Plus, I covered the Nevada Legislature in 1985 – in the 1860s my literary hero, Mark Twain, roamed those halls for Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise.

Never far from the influences of the Old West.

Yet I couldn’t instill that Western love in my own children. Those avowed East-Coasters tend to yawn at my movie and TV choices. And my old reporting stories.

So now that I’m in Arizona, I’ll take any opportunity to go on adventures to famous and not-so-famous sites from Old West history.

Prominent among them is Tombstone, the once-booming silver mining town in Southern Arizona that is home to the most famous Old West shootout, the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

Of course, nearly everyone’s perception of Tombstone is informed by the 1993 movie Tombstone, featuring Val Kilmer’s iconic performance as Doc Holliday. And that is why, playing tourist for a day as I strode up and down Allen Street, I wore my “I’m Your Huckleberry” T-shirt. Where else am I going to wear that thing?

Tombstone itself is about two hours southeast of Tucson, along a two-lane highway that crosses the mesquite and Palo Verde-covered desert 30 miles or so from Mexico. It’s got a lovely view of the Dragoon Mountains to the northeast.

The heart of historic Tombstone is about five blocks of dirt-covered and bar-and-restaurant lined Allen Street, one block off State Route 80, Fremont Street. This historic area is a mix of Deadwood and Virginia City – storefronts, bars and hotels, an Instagram-ready coffin and hanging rope and occasional shooting re-enactments in the middle of the street. And a stagecoach or two ferries tourists up and down the bumpy road.

Around one corner is the tree-like world’s largest rose bush known as the “Shady Lady,” and around another is the Tombstone Epitaph, Arizona’s oldest continuously published newspaper. Being a former newspaper reporter, I paid my respects and admired the displays of the equipment it took to produce a newspaper back in the day.

Just up Allen Street is the OK Corral, known for the 1881 shootout pitting Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil, the town marshal, and Morgan, and their friend Doc Holliday, against the outlaw “Cowboys” that included the Clanton and McLaury brothers. But the actual gunfight took place on the other side of the block in an empty lot facing Fremont Street. The Epitaph has on display a front page featuring a map Wyatt Earp drew in 1925 outlining where everyone was during the gunfight.

At the other end of Allen Street is the famous Bird Cage Theater, the notorious theater/saloon/gambling hall/brothel that, interestingly, contains all original, un-rehabbed woodwork, including fading wallpaper-lined balcony boxes. Someone has counted 146 or so bullet holes shot into the walls and ceiling; you can run your fingers over some of them at the base of the stage. In the basement you get a peek inside the brothel rooms and a poker table-bar area that legend says was the site of an eight-year-long poker game. In a cellar below the theater, under layers of dust, sit barrels and casks and other, largely unidentifiable but probably related to the theater, equipment.

Oh, and did I say the Bird Cage is haunted?

Tombstone has plenty of places to stay; we happened on the Sagebrush Inn, a faded but charming motel about four blocks east of the main area whose rooms are named for famous Old West characters. Lucky us: We got the Doc Holliday room!

An interesting side quest is the historic but abandoned townsite of Fairbank, nine miles away. It was Tombstone’s train depot and at one point served four different railroads that transported passengers, cattle and silver ore. By the 1920s, the network connected Tombstone to Benson, Bisbee, Fort Huachuca and Patagonia.

Seeing the Fairbank site helped me understand how a town like Tombstone, reachable only by stagecoach, could develop. The site is not far from the mill that processed Tombstone’s silver, and includes ruins of homes, businesses and a schoolhouse; it is now part of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area and features hiking and birding along the San Pedro River.

And for all you Tombstone fans out there, they filmed the town scenes in Mescal, off Interstate 10 west of Benson. Though it was closed for filming the day we passed through, there are opportunities for tours if your timing is right.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! Since I’m Irish, I’m constitutionally required to wish you a happy St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. Be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next time!

Our long winter nightmare is over, kind of before it even began. It’s been 90 in Phoenix and my spring flowers are wilting under the heat of the it’s-technically-still-winter sun. But I’ve got a handyman showing me the ropes on home improvement … and preseason baseball has begun!

But first: As I was mapping out this blog post, I realized that in November I had spent an entire post on my frustrating battle with Vertigo, but had neglected to follow up.

So, consider this good news: Vestibular physical therapy for Vertigo is the bomb diggity. I’ve been going twice weekly for eight weeks now, though I still feel goofy wandering around the PT floor doing eye exercises while people with significant mobility issues are busting themselves to get their legs and shoulders moving again.

Yet it’s made a significant difference in how I move and feel. Dizziness? Well, it don’t come ’round here no more. And I want to keep it that way.

Shoutout to my friend Sam for the reference, and for informing me that Arizona allows you to go to physical therapy for the price of a copay, without a doctor’s order.

And to think that 10 years ago, my insurance only allowed me eight PT sessions for a post-operative knee.

Sigh.

OK, back to baseball. Not to mix sports metaphors, but this past week I did a Dodgers trifecta – a Friday afternoon game against the San Francisco Giants at the Giants’ Cactus League stadium in Scottsdale, followed by a Dodger weekend with my friend Jana, featuring games Saturday and Sunday at the Dodgers’ Camelback Ranch home in Glendale.

My parents raised me to be polite, so I didn’t want to antagonize Giants fans by wearing all my Dodger gear at the game. I opted for the relative safety of my Jackie Robinson “42” jersey instead of my Freddie Freeman jersey. Note: I’m partial to first basemen since my days as a ridiculously short but actually pretty decent softball first-baseman.

I needn’t have worried. There was a lot of Dodger blue in the stands. I didn’t burst into flames when I walked through the gate. And I even perused gear in the store without having to ask anyone to invite me in first (think of the vampires in Sinners).

I like Scottsdale Stadium; this year I liked it because we were able to enjoy the game in the shade by the third inning. That helped the Dodgers’ loss – including a Giants grand slam – go down a little easier. The bright side: I did get to see World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitch three innings (though he did give up a home run, darn it).

The next two days, however, were simply hot as hell, in Arizona’s version of “Blue Heaven.”

The Dodgers’ facilities, which they share with the Chicago White Sox, are lovely – lots of green, lined with trees and what real estate agents call “water features” though the water is dyed Dodger blue. There are also walking paths with plenty of fan access to workouts and batting practice, and plenty of opportunities for social media photos.

But the field itself is set wrong – home plate is supposed to be on the southwest corner, but here it’s on the northwest one. So sitting anywhere in the stands, except for maybe 10 rows up high along the first base line, puts you in full sun for the entire game. And sitting along the third base line, as we did, forces you to face the sun squarely for the entire game. A 90-degree day quickly turns to 100-plus when you’re in the middle of a concrete heat island. As it did this weekend.

Is it too much to ask for night games during Spring Training?

Nevertheless, I did get to see some of my favorite players – Freeman, Betts, Muncy, Hernández (Teoscar, since Kiké is on the IL), Pages, Rojas, Vesia, and the new closer, Edwin Diaz. And a couple of those prospects look pretty good.

I’m thankful that Jana had the foresight to bring along cloths soaked in ice water that we wore around our necks to help us through the heat.

It was then I realized that it could have been worse – I am so used to the dry air here that I almost forgot how irritated I would get at the ridiculously swampy weather I endured through those August Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles games over the years.

The desert, again, for the win!

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! I’m hoping to get to more Spring Training games before the end of March, but my schedule may dictate otherwise. Be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next time!

It took a year, but each of my three children finally made the cross-country trek for a visit.

It’s not lost on me that their visits all coincided with our scandalously sunny wintertime weather. Contrast that with the below-zero New York freeze that my youngest, Meghan, escaped from, and then returned to, in January.

Yes, come to Arizona for Mom’s warm (80 degrees in January!) embrace! Stay for the cool places to visit!

It didn’t happen without a measure of angst. I still marvel at how my own mom, who had seven children in a span of 13 years, knew each of our personalities and could connect individually with us in a way that made us feel seen and understood. And she was a stickler for ensuring that everyone was treated equally.

My late husband was pretty good at that, too: He talked politics with one child, toured art museums with another, and reveled in bird watching with the third.

So the pressure was on. Lucky for me, I truly enjoy the adults that my children have become. And each visited separately, giving me the opportunity to focus only on one at a time.

Ellen, the bird-watcher, drove out with Rebecca, now her wife, to deliver Digeridoo to our new home shortly after I moved. They stayed for a week and helped me settle in while sampling local chicken wing takeout joints, checking out thrift stores, testing various Mexican restaurants’ Margaritas, and taking a wine tasting day trip to the Verde Valley. One regret: My baseball buddy, Ellen missed spring training by two weeks.

Ah, we’ll get there.

It took until Christmas for Margaret, my Chicago politician, to make it here. But that delay helped me give her a better sense of where I live. We enjoyed the Phoenix Ballet’s holiday production of The Nutcracker followed by a warm evening nightcap at the hotel bar across the street, the luminarias and dinner at the Desert Botanical Garden, and Arizona Falls, site of a tiny, 750-kilowatt Salt River Project hydroelectric plant on the Arizona Canal.

Meghan, the museum hopper and fellow Christopher Nolan movie aficionado, rounded out my year with an exhausting week that took us to several restaurants and museums. She’s a bartender and server at a high-end restaurant near Rockefeller Center in New York City, so she was eager to find interesting places to dine and to pick the brains of our bartenders.

And Phoenix did not disappoint. At the Phoenix Art Museum, Meghan spotted the new Alden, named for Alden Dow, architect of the museum. It is a spare yet elegant place to eat that allowed me to rest my museum-weary legs.

She ordered the steak tartare – yes, the same Meghan who as a child ate nothing more complex than chicken and rice – accompanied by an Elevation (aquavit, pear, lime leaf tonic). I washed down my portion of the steak tartare with a cocktail called 2^nd Unit Block (Aperol, grapefruit, fleur de sel, sparkling wine).

Meghan also enjoyed the Desert Botanical Garden – falling in love, as I have, with the stunning assortment of cacti found in the desert. And we toured Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s breathtaking winter studio and lab tucked into the foothills of the McDowell Mountains east of Scottsdale (Alden Dow was an apprentice). Also: We enjoyed the Heard Museum’s extensive collections of Native art and its sobering presentation on the Indian Schools across America.

For fun, we dressed up and drove to Cave Creek for formal afternoon tea at the English Rose Tea Room – complete with scones, sandwiches and petit fours. On Meghan’s suggestion, we got an extra pot of Lapsang Souchong tea, irresistible with a smoky aroma and taste.

And when her flight was canceled and we had some unexpected extra time, I showed Meghan my favorite bookstore, Changing Hands, and we enjoyed a sensational happy hour snack next door at Tesota’s indoor-outdoor bar, where she got the poke bowl and talked shop with the bartender.

I know, there are many other places to go, people to see and things to do. I didn’t even touch on the hikes I took with them – hikes that three adults who live in the Baltimore-DC area (from now on I will refer to it as the DMV), Chicago and New York just cannot experience on a regular basis.

But I do want them to come back, so I’ve held back a little and have ammo ready for when they do.

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Thank you for reading and/or listening to my blog! Can’t wait for my next visitor, now that preseason baseball is finally upon us! Be kind, have fun and we’ll see you next time.

I took advantage of a recent warm and sunny winter weekend to get out there and explore Prescott, about 90 miles (as the car drives) northwest of Phoenix.

Prescott (pronounced PRESS-kit, not Press-COT) is the steadily beating heart of Red Arizona. It sits in the high desert, 5,400 feet above sea level, with a population approaching 50,000 – though the number jumps to 249,000 if you include the sprawling suburbs and small towns in the rest of Yavapai County.

While attending Northern Arizona University decades ago, I often passed the Prescott turnoffs on my way to Phoenix, but never went there. One of my favorite roommates – a fellow journalism student and sorority sister – grew up there. That made this trip a little wistful: She died three years ago. And while I attended her memorial service in another city, finally making it to Prescott gave me the chance to pay my respects at her burial site.

Prescott is a lovely, hilly city that, thankfully, falls short of tourist-trappy – I’m looking at you, Virginia City and Deadwood. There is a real city at Prescott’s heart that evolved beyond the Wild West to what it is today.

The region was settled by the indigenous Yavapai, explored by the Spanish, and boomed when railroad construction followed the discovery of gold and silver before the Civil War. Nearby Fort Whipple helped protect the mines, but contributed to the region’s role in the American Indian Wars that pitted settlers against native tribes.

Prescott was the capital when Arizona became a territory in 1863. Among its notable historic residents: Virgil Earp, brother of famed lawman Wyatt. He was a night watchman and constable in Prescott before joining the family down in Tombstone. Doc Holliday spent the summer of 1880 in Prescott, and even practiced dentistry there.

Get used to seeing imagery of the Earps and Holliday, inspired by the 1994 movie Tombstone (which I of course love) all over town. There is even a “Doc & The Earps” art display featuring works by artists Bob Boze Bell and Thom Ross, which ends Feb. 15, at the Sharlot Hall Museum just west of downtown.

Do not miss the Sharlot Hall Museum. It’s named for the poet, activist and historian who a century ago saw the need to preserve Arizona, Prescott and native tribal history. She was also instrumental in ensuring Arizona became a state separately from New Mexico. The museum tells the city’s story of grit and perseverance and incorporates the site, and the original building, of the territorial governor’s mansion.

Arizona’s legendary senator, Barry Goldwater, launched his 1964 presidential campaign on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse, set on Pioneer Plaza in the middle of downtown, across from the department store that bore his family’s name. The courthouse grounds feature a memorial honoring Teddy Roosevelt’s Spanish-American War Rough Riders – Prescott Mayor and Sheriff Buckey O’Neill was one of them. Other memorials are dedicated to public safety officers, cowboys and the Granite Mountain Hotshots, the 19-member wildland firefighting team whose members died in the 2013 Yarnell Fire nearby. They were based in Prescott.

West of the plaza is famed Whiskey Row, featuring the Palace Saloon, the wood-paneled oldest restaurant/bar in the state, and the Hotel St. Michael, formerly the Burke Hotel, built in 1891. In true Wild West fashion, it’s said that during Prescott’s great fire of 1900, patrons of the bars along Whiskey Row moved everything to the plaza across the street to wait it out.

I stayed at another historic hotel, the famous Hassayampa Inn, built 99 years ago to accommodate early automobile travelers who braved bumpy highways to get there, and funded in part through local citizen investment. The lobby is not to be missed for its colorfully painted interior and attention to detail and history, and for its original elevator that requires desk employees to leave their posts to take guests up to their rooms. Warning: The hotel room walls are paper-thin!

I mostly ate at the hotel – the food, delicious; the portions, generous; the atmosphere, historic. But Murphy’s restaurant one block away is special. It’s in an 1890s-era mercantile and general store. As the daughter of a Woolworth store manager, I appreciated the space. As a hungry human, I appreciated the food. And when I got a wild hair and decided that I could add a drink at the end since I walked there, I got the Chocolate Peppermint Nightcap with Pinnacle Whipped Vodka, crème de cacao, peppermint schnapps, half & half, and one of those chocolate mint candies that melted into the drink. Mmm.

Finally, I took a quick trip to the northern reaches of town to see the Granite Dells, an area of exposed bedrock and worn-down granite in interesting formations that are perched near the city’s Watson Lake. People have built custom homes in the area with amazing views of the formations. There is a five-mile hiking trail around the lake that I intend to fully tackle on a future visit.

And there will be a future visit.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! It sure felt good to get back out on the road for more adventures. There’s more to come! Be kind, have fun and we’ll see you next time!

I feel a little more officially Arizonan today, as I’ve lived in Arizona now for a solid year.

And in that time, I’ve racked up 50 blog posts. This is 51. I took a week off in June to celebrate the wedding of my daughter Ellen.

It won’t be the last. But first, some perspective.

The idea for this blog came about when I was planning for retirement but didn’t know what I was going to do with my time. I know myself well enough to know my life needs structure. I figured a weekly deadline for a brief blog would fit the bill. And I knew I wanted to have adventures and write about them from the POV of a 60-something single woman.

And I’ll be honest: 500 words was always aspirational. I went over that mark many times.

And being the type of person who doesn’t shrink from the limelight, I really felt like I wanted to live my life out loud for the first time in many years.

I had no grand plan. I just wanted to write in a way that I had never done after 40-plus years of news reporting, public relations and a brief stint as an energy industry analyst. Little did I know that by the time my first year was up, I’d have nearly 200 subscribers. To all of you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

The past year has been amazing. For someone whose bottom-line retirement goal was to move back to the Southwest and rekindle the spirit of the 20-something woman she was when she lived here last – but in a much smarter and wiser way and with a little more money – it’s exceeded my wildest expectations.

I firmly believe the obscene amount of sunshine and the dry climate out here are behind my newfound love of hiking and exploring. That was something I just could not get excited about in the muggy and frequently gloomy weather back East. But I’ve also learned over the past year that I am more than a political junkie who follows the arcana of the energy industry.

I have interests, people!

Now that I’m launching the next phase of my retirement, I’m planning a few changes here. First, though you’ll still get my blog in your email inbox and see it on Substack, it won’t be happening on a weekly basis. My life now is filling up with many events, activities and yes, new types of deadlines. So this will be less structured, more thoughtful and, I hope, a little more fun!

Next, I want to experiment with posting Notes on Substack, which would be shorter observations about life and culture and current events that are not part of this blog.

And finally, I’m hoping to play around more with audio and video posting. I mean, why not? Media are changing all around us. It’s not like I’m forcing you to watch it.

I’m just having fun.

That said, I want to thank everyone who helped me over the past year with editing and asking me the tough questions like, “Did you really mean to say it this way, Mare?” Friends, family members and daughters alike: Thank you!

I’ll close out today with some recommendations for reading and/or listening pleasure. They’ve helped enlighten me over the past year:

Sherman Alexie: Native American poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist and filmmaker. His is a quiet corner of Substack and I look forward to reading him.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez: Novelist and former journalist, based in New Mexico. Her Substack observations on life as a Latina with deeper family ties to the United States of America than many white people are not to be missed.

Diabolical Lies: I stumbled across this podcast from Caro Claire Burke and Katie Gatti Tassin shortly after moving to Arizona, and have done real-life meet-ups with other local fans over the past year. They are sharp political and cultural observers who, importantly, do their homework and are not afraid to dive deep into any specific issue.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to my blog! I look forward to writing many more of these! Be kind, have fun, and see you next time!

There is a certain comfort that comes with a routine. A pattern you’re used to following. A place where you know you belong. The familiar rhythms of your day, your week, your month. Or maybe even your year.* Sorry.

Age has provided me more comfort with that sort of structure. I certainly needed it when I retired last year and didn’t know how I was going to fill my days.

Six years ago I was in year 23 of a hectic morning rush to work, a long day in the office and then an exhausting commute home to deal with husband, children and dinner, homework, meetings and other activities. I recall wishing for either the adrenaline rush of a seat-of-my-pants day or one that allowed me to simply dream, strategize and plan.

Through Covid, my husband’s death and my children moving out, everything of course changed. And now in retirement, it’s all on me. Retirement gave me the opportunity to build my very own routine from scratch, one that allowed me to move slower, more purposefully. And, of course, breathe.

I started with yoga and Pilates. I threw in a mid-week hiking day and then a lap pool day. For better or worse, I gave myself a weekly deadline for this blog. I met friends and joined monthly salon-style get-togethers, occasional meet-ups at local coffeehouses and hikes or kayak outings on Tempe Town Lake. And I do some volunteer work. Also, there’s car-wash day, Trader Joe’s Day and Explore-the-Valley Day.

A good friend of mine tells me I’m doing retirement “right.” I’m flattered, but not sure what he means. Everyone has a “right.” Mine works for me. And even now, I’m worried about getting too comfortable in the event something will come along and upend it all.

Like my dentist. He broke my routine last week when he removed a bottom front tooth so the rest of the teeth have enough space in my lower jaw. And he installed plastic aligners to help move those teeth. I have to wear those things for 20 to 22 hours a day.

Frowning face emoji.

Thankfully, I tend to smile with a focus on my upper teeth so nobody has to see the tooth gap that makes me look like a ’70s-era hockey player.

But this forced a rethinking of almost everything I do. I’m required to remove the plastic aligners whenever I want to eat or drink anything other than water. And I must clean both aligners, and teeth, before I put them back in my mouth.

So much for on-the-fly snacking – I like to graze – or just grabbing a drink with a friend. Is it worth having to take everything out for that Dutch Bros chai latte? If so, when will I get home so I can put them back in? Yes, I drink my chai lattes while I drive on my errands.

Worse: How do I do this at a baseball game? Do I really want to go out to dinner, requiring me to go to the bathroom to remove and then clean and replace the aligners every time? Do I trust the water in the faucets at restaurants or Chase Field to clean my aligners, or do I take water with me?

Now that I reread that last sentence, ugh. Maybe I’ll be eating at home for the next 14 months.

On the other hand, this all might help me lose a little weight. Or save money. Or both.

Can’t hurt – anything other than my mouth.

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to this week’s blog post! I don’t mean to be mean to dentists. But this is really cramping my style. Oh well, 14 months is 14 months. Then I get a retainer. Be kind, don’t forget to have fun, and we’ll see you next week!

*Apologies to The Rembrandts and all fans of “Friends.”

Another turn of the calendar, and suddenly it’s time for New Year’s resolutions.

As if!

I’m not one for resolutions. I tend to break them before January is even halfway over.

For years I tied self-improvement to the start of the school year. Meanwhile, one of my daughters keeps sending me videos about how the Gregorian patriarchy forced us into this midwinter calendar changeover, when the year really should begin in the spring.

April Fool, anyone?

Further, I took up Pilates and yoga in February 2023. And notwithstanding Erika Kirk’s views on moms and Pilates, I’ve been doing both consistently for nearly three years now. That’s the longest I’ve ever kept up with a workout. And that’s even after a 2,000-mile relocation to Arizona.

Yet 2026 will be big: I turn 65 in April, so I’m figuring out Medicare. I’ve got to finish that process soon.

And of course, my 2025 taxes are going to be a challenge, what with my residence change and status as a new retiree who was still on payroll for a pay period that extended into 2025.

Pardon me while I scream into the void.

Yet I’m hoping the momentum that I had in 2025 will carry through 2026. It’s not that I want anything more, or more of anything. I just want to continue enjoying what I already am so very thankful for.

Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to a couple of things this year:

First, for years I have been a huge fan of The Moth StorySLAM, which you can hear on NPR. We used to listen to it on drives home from vacations or Sunday day trips when the kids were small. KJZZ, the local NPR affiliate, sponsors a monthly story slam that is so fun. I’ve been mulling it over since I got to Phoenix, and now I’m saying it publicly so I can’t hide behind any excuses: In 2026 I plan to tell a story on stage at the local slam.

And I enjoy writing these blog posts so much that I want to get better at it. So, starting January 30, I’m taking an eight-week writing seminar by former Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini at Changing Hands, my favorite bookstore. The workshop will focus on the art of opinion writing in op-eds, criticism, essays, blogs and letters to the editor.

So if you’ll have me, I’ll still be appearing in your inbox and on Substack for the foreseeable future. However, I’ll be making a few changes after my one-year mark at the end of this month. Stay tuned.

Of course, there is one thing I’m not looking forward to this year: On Tuesday, I’m having a lower front tooth and the bone beneath it removed, as the aging teeth in my mouth are crowding it out. Ugh.

I’m not a fan of dentists. I blame it on the torture I went through at age 7, when I had four teeth – two permanent – removed to make way for teeth and metal braces on my uppers in a mouth that was too small for everything.

And all this time my family thought I had a big mouth.

To top it off, I am being fitted for an Invisalign brace to help guide my lower teeth into their proper places. So, 50 years after my first bout with braces, I’m gearing up for Round Two.

Yay me?

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Thanks for reading and/or listening to this week’s blog post. I know: Dentists can be wonderful people. I am thankful this dentist listens to me when I express anxiety. And I do. Often. Anyway, be kind, have fun, and we’ll see you next week!*

*If I’m still alive.