Salon.com > Nebraska

How baseball saved me from Rush Limbaugh

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:01:00 +0000

Well, it was another day of my cross-country car journey with my dog, Sadie, with stops to throw the ball. Before I explain how baseball saved me from Rush Limbaugh, first a Sadie update: She misses Boulder, but found nature in this little patch of land behind La Quinta:

She thought this drainage ditch was another creek and made a run for it (I put her back on the leash):

One stop came in lovely Newton, Iowa, the childhood home of Charles Murray – I won’t hold that against Newton -- as well as Maytag headquarters. We had Sunset Park to ourselves in a cold rain:

So, at one point I broke down and listened to Rush. You know, even the paranoid Sean Hannity sounds a little jauntier. Rush actually seems depressed. He was inveighing against Michelle Obama comparing herself to Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old Chicago girl killed in gang violence in January. Obama’s speech was incredibly moving; NPR played long clips of it and she sounded as though she was fighting tears; listening to her, so was I.

In Nebraska: Old friends, “Mad Men” and chatting about divorce

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

I feel I’ve failed you again, dear reader, in that I’m not discovering roadside kitsch or figuring out why red state people like their guns or (sometimes) think Obama wasn’t born here. This weather spooked me, and I’m driving crazy fast when I’m driving.

It was hard to leave my friend Mary’s house Wednesday morning once we heard there was going to be snow all day across Nebraska. Both fireplaces were lit, there was coffee and muffins, Sadie was happy with her pack, the gorgeous Golden Retrievers Max and Malie, and I was headed to Nebraska? Why?

A word about Mary. I met her through Open Salon, she was one of the fantastic originals, and we connected through our writing right away. She came to our crazy Salon party at the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, where Glenn Greenwald and Duncan Black cavorted with Joe Klein (no, they didn’t cavort, although they were all there) and Arianna Huffington came for a minute and left her lovely sister Agape while she departed in a limo for dinner with celebs (which was all good) and Gov. Ed Rendell dropped by and a bunch of Open Salon people came and they were pretty much my favorites. There was Dave Cullen, of course, my writer on the Columbine school shootings, still a year or two away from his award-winning book, and I’m sure there were other people, and then there was Mary.

A much-needed post-Hannity snow day

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:41:00 +0000

As part of my ongoing road trip across the country with my dog, Sadie, I planned to spend two days in Boulder, but wound up with no choice in the matter: We’re socked in with about a foot of snow. I tried to race the storm to Boulder on Monday, but it found me in Evanston, Wyo., when I woke up yesterday morning.

I complained in my last post that it’s been hard to meet people since I’m averse to leaving Sadie alone in a hotel room. But in Evanston I met a drunk welder in a cowboy hat as soon as I checked into my dog-friendly Best Western. “Hey, good lookin’,” he said, and I can state categorically that I was not good looking at that moment: dirty hair, no makeup, boots still salty from our trip to Bonneville Salt Flats.

(Oh, here’s Sadie, before she got salt poisoning.)

GOP’s dumb California-bashing

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:45:00 +0000

As a columnist, I receive email every day from readers across this great country. Not surprisingly, some of these letters are angry missives frothing with apocalyptic rhetoric and dire warnings. Of late, no matter the controversy of the day nor what specific issue I happen to be writing about, these particular screeds (often in response to liberal successes) have been repeating a singular message: liberals, progressives, socialists, communists, hippies and other alleged undesirables are trying to "turn America into California."

No doubt, you've probably caught this or a similar phrase in your Web surfing, your email box and your casual discussions. It is the conversation-ender du jour. Don't like the election results and the policies that follow? Deride them as proof America is "becoming California." Don't like a bill moving through your legislature? Cite it as more evidence your state is "turning into California." Don't like what Congress is doing on any given day? Write a screed bewailing America "turning into California."

NRA pushes “right to hunt and fish” amendments

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 14:58:00 +0000

In four states this November, voters will decide whether to institute a constitutional amendment ensuring the "right to hunt and fish." These measures are being pushed by the National Rifle Association primarily as a way of preemptively protecting hunters and gun owners from "radical" animal rights groups.

Since 1996, twelve states have put into place constitutional provisions to ensure the right to hunt and fish. Vermont also has a measure in place, but it's been around since 1777. In the other states, the measures represent a supposed fear that outdoorsmen's rights could be at stake if animal rights groups have their way.

Next month Kentucky, Idaho, Wyoming and Nebraska all have ballot measures up for a vote after passing the bills out of their respective legislatures. In Nebraska and Kentucky, the measures carve out the right for people to "to hunt, to fish and to harvest wildlife"; in Wyoming and Idaho, the bills specify the right to "hunt, fish and trap."