A 16-month-old German shepherd is not really a puppy. Nor an adult. It’s more like a giddy adolescent velociraptor. Mostly. Sometimes, the situation can deteriorate. And understand that I’m only speaking hypothetically about dogs and dinosaurs, so no letters from paleontologists or creationists, please. In my Jurassic fantasia, some dinosaurs–like Solo the boy dog–were preternaturally […]
Cat Warren
Posted inGuides
How to train your dream dog
My loyal, altruistic, gentle German shepherd of nearly eight years lay dying in our kitchen. As the sodium pentobarbital was injected to stop an already failing heart in a badly failing body, as tears were rolling down my face, and I was soothingly telling him everything was fine, a small portion of my broken heart […]
Posted inNews
A confession obsession
The New York Times is on a roll, or in a role. Or maybe just rolling in it. Or eating it. Call it the daily’s special–a mea culpa roll. If you’re fond of the taste of crow, then you can try replicating this roll’s recipe. It calls for a healthy dose of self-recrimination, followed by […]
Posted inNews
Who killed Doonesbury?
War is heck. Sometimes, it isn’t even heck. It’s silence. Especially when you’re The Durham Herald-Sun and worry about how offensive it can be. No, no, no. Not war. Goodness no. Just strong language about war. And apparently, war is also heck if you’re the Bush administration, and have to worry about how offensive the […]
Posted inNews
Mainstream manipulation
The local media are onto the new culture wars raging at North Carolina universities like white on rice. “Let the debate begin,” cheers one Durham Herald-Sun headline. “Students have right to ideas,” a News & Observer headline sanctimoniously proclaims. And now we have a federal probe of UNC-Chapel Hill. Hooray! More headlines. Front page in […]
Posted inNews
Herald-Sun zonks self with Doonesbury
The Durham Herald-Sun had a Groundhog Day moment on its editorial pages last week–Tuesday’s Doonesbury was there again Wednesday. An astute Herald-Sun reader emailed with a reasonable question: Censorship at work? Nope. A technological breakdown. Editorial page editor Bob Wilson said he was irritated at “the electronic screw-up,” but it was nothing more than that. […]
Posted inNews
I’ve grown accustomed to his face
John Edwards is running for president. He is handsome, especially with his new “big-boy haircut.” He is charming. He is winning. TheNews & Observer tells me so. Day after day after day. In thousands of column inches and hundreds of photographs. In dozens of graphics and sidebars (and in God knows how many gigabytes on […]
