Published Pieces
Poem about our Grandpa
Written by my Cousin Bill.
The Grand Enigma
In the days of eloquence portrayed, when the Grand Enigma’s yarns parlayed
and held my fascination then; as much as now… and then again.
Whether tales of wars, thoughts and creeds, or those of tight knit families;
my ears would open, my mind absorb the special impact of his lore.
To hear it told was magic then; now the silence starves me deep within.
‘Twere also times conjointly spent building retrospections that can’t be lent
to help you understand The Man. So many queries have I on hand.
The Originator of The Man had left no footsteps; the void within.
The Grand Enigma’s knowledge of the consanguine – our great unknown.
The ache perceived within his heart, though surely great, he’ll not impart.
In his vesper years of evensong, his tales have ceased – now passed along
this fervent reflex thus assumed. The torch bequeathed… epoch anew.
Korea BusinessWorld Magazine
Years ago I was a Reporter/Copy Editor for Korea BusinessWorld Magazine in Seoul. I found a stack of old issues and decided to scan and put the pages I wrote in these issues into PDF format.
The size of the PDF’s are rather large as the article portions were scanned at “actual” size with a B/W DPI suitable for OCR if I wanted to do so later. The Covers and Mastheads of each issue were scanned at a lower color DPI and resolution.
November 1988 (size = 10.2 MB)
December 1988 (size = 15.1 MB)
January 1989 (size =Â 33.1 MB)
F*** Crow T-shirt
My Letter to the Editor
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Last month we had F*** Bush and this month we get F*** Crow. Since I am a Fraternity member (Sigma Chi) and for a time the Alum that Crow MOST hated I would like to weigh in on this matter.
Crow is certainly seeking to remake ASU. Some of those changes I welcome while others I’m still waiting to see. That said, Crow seems to have certainly toned down his “Sherman’s March to the Sea” approach as he seeks to implement his vision.
When Crow first arrived he certainly seemed hell bent on driving the Fraternities from campus. I was seated less then 10 feet away from Dr. Crow on September 27, 2002 when the Regents approved the sale of the Alpha Dr. properties to the Fraternities. I related the following story at the time to our Alums.
“While I was seated with other members of Alpha Drive house corporations (Pike, Sigma Nu and Sig Ep) waiting for the meeting to get started Michael Crow (the new ASU President) walks over and is talking to a couple seated in the row in front of us (he has never met any of us) and I overhear him talking to them about Fraternities. He certainly let slip his personal animus towards Greek Letter societies. He said “When I left to go to school my father said to stay away from anything with Greek Letters so when my Phi Beta Kappa arrived I threw it in the trash”. Now does that indicate a deep-seated bias and outright hostility??”
1st Amendment at CSU – making a Professor cry uncle
The following is a “Letter to the Editor” that I sent in this morning in reply to an Editorial in the State Press newspaper (reprinted below my letter).
UPDATE: Below this is an email exchange with a Teacher of Constitutional Law.
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The opinion expressed in the F*** BUSH editorial demonstrators the truth about navels (a**holes, etc…). Everybody has one.
The Editor of the CSU Paper does have a First Amendment right to tell Bush to “F***” off. If he wanted to go stand on a street corner and hand out flyers that he had personally made and personally paid to have duplicated at Kinkos on his own dime that would be an example of his exercising his First Amendment rights. But to say he had a “right” to print it in the School paper is STUPID and UNINFORMED.
The CSU paper has established guidelines for printing offensive language in editorials. Those guidelines were established by the Paper and not by Congress – last time I looked the First Amendment applied to laws passed by Congress and not the published Editorial policy of the paper (see page 18 of the CSU Paper’s policy on Editorials) which states: “Even though profane and vulgar words are part of everyday conversation, they are not to be used in news accounts or letters to the editor unless they are considered by the editor-in-chief to be essential to readers’ understanding of the situation. Use of words viewed as vulgar and profane also should not overshadow other, more important facts of the story. Profane and vulgar words are not acceptable for opinion writing”
Your own Editorial hit the proverbial nail when you wrote “In this respect, the editorial in question failed entirely. We learn nothing about the Taser incident, or Bush. Nothing is presented in the way of argument or intent.”
Pool Drownings
Published in Az Republic “My Turn Colum” Spring 2002
Another day, another body, another mother cries. Splash. Splash. Splash. As the year turns from school to summer I am forced to once again be reminded of the void in education, caring and concern that we as a society seem to have for many of those that are least able to care for themselves.
The names and circumstances of the tiny victims scream at us from the Newspaper, the TV and the Radio and still we really only give lip service to finding a solution. More fences we cry. Better supervision we plead. But still the bodies drop. Splash. Splash. Splash.
Fences are installed with new pools and erected around existing ones and still the death toll mounts. Pool alarms are sold, self-closing gates are installed but still we hear the horrid sound. Splash. Splash. Splash.
Pools and the sound of splashing water are supposed to be a joyous part of summer life. But for far too many families those sounds and images are forever linked with pain, sorrow and regret. It does not have to be this way.
Simple and effective efforts can begin to turn the tide so that you, your neighbor or your friends do not have to bear the scars of losing one so close. It is a change that does not require government intervention or legislative mandate. But can simply start as a ground swell that could show the rest of the country how much we, as citizens, care about each other.
Right wing has First Amendment rights too
(This letter to the Editor appeared in the Mesa (Arizona) Tribune a few years ago)
Right wing has First Amendment rights too
This letter is in response to James Kimes’ letter decrying what he sees as the takeover of talk radio by the right wing.
Partisan complaints about bad treatment in the press are not new to the presidency and ring quite hollow when you look at the partisan sniping presidents have had to endure throughout history.
The majority (57 percent) of the electorate in the last election voted against President Clinton and his proposed policies, so why is it surprising to the minority who voted for him that there would be vocal opposition to his social and economic re-engineering.
I am sorry if left-wing whiners have a problem with right-wing radicals turning to talk radio as a forum for their message. However, if there was not a significant segment of the population turning in to listen then the shows would go off the air. For example, Rush Limbaugh is still here but where is G. Gordon Liddy? That is the beauty of capitalism.
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