Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter In her novel Surfacing, Margaret Atwood wrote “The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them, there ought to be as many for love.” She‘s probably right, although what passes for love today might not be as important to us as snow was for the …
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Category:Holidays
Kickass and Heart Harm
http://www.scientificanimations.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper’s response to having a heart attack back in 1983 as he drove home from Chicago was to stop at a truck stop and have a beer and a sandwich. With one totally clogged heart artery and others almost …
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Kickass and January 9th Birthday
Selena N. B. H. from Fayetteville, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that there was a time in the keeper’s life when Jan. 9 marked the birthdays of his late wife Betty, his dog Doc, and the president of the United States—Richard Nixon. It was his custom in …
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Kickass Remembers Pearl Harbor
National Archives at College Park , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper recalls the widely used “Remember Pearl Harbor,” catch phrase from WWII days, and suggests its revival along with some editing: “Forget Pearl Harbor and Remember Jan. 6.” If ever there was a day that …
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Polar Bear Diary
Photo by Mark Mamerow Article by Mark Mamerow Mara and I arrived at Wahl Avenue and parked at about 11:30 am—X minus 30 minutes to the January 1st Polar Bear plunge at Milwaukee’s Bradford Beach. People were getting out of their cars. You could identify the Polar Bears. They carried cloth shopping bags of towels and shoes, and …
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Kickass 1/2/22
Photo by Isabela Kronemberger on Unsplash Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, being painfully aware of the ravages of aging on the memory capacities of members of his age group, points to a positive: yesterday he adopted a number of serious News Year’s resolutions, and today he can only remember the one having to do with …
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Kickass Adjusts to New Year
Rob Wall, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes that the keeper and Phyllis, celebrated the arrival of the new year by finally wrestling the cork out of a long-stored bottle of champagne to find that its contents had gone bad and had to be dumped down the drain—perhaps …
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The Couch Potato’s Guide to Ringing in the New Year
Maasaak, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Originally posted in December, 2020) By Geoff Carter We thought we had it made after getting out of 2020, but this has been another hard year—remembering everything that happened is painful—but we have to; if we do not remember, we’ll be doomed to repeat the same mistakes yet again. …
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Kickass and Colorado Fire
(Photograph used by permission of the USDA Forest Service.), CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, like everyone else with family or loved ones in Colorado, made a phone call—to his son Rick and wife Becky who live in a Denver suburb, to be reassured that …
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A Few Good Things
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter I’ve been mentoring new teachers in our local public school system for the past few years now. One characteristic I’ve noticed both with them (and myself, during my own career as a teacher) is that every instructor, no matter how experienced, always has one of those classrooms that …
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Kickass and Snow Denial Plan
Taxiarchos228, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, is assisting the keeper in distributing instructions for using the Snow-Denial plan which, incidentally, is similar to how the Repubs embrace the “big lie.” Fact one: Though the ground is covered with something white, that could be god’s dandruff as these things are …
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Kickass and Christmas Dog Fight
Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that even including a brief but vicious dog fight in the middle of the living room, the Christmas Day gathering with the keeper and Phyllis will go into the records as another delightful memory maker. Phyllis’s production …
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