"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything." - John Kenneth Galbraith

NBCNews.com headline: "Nor'easter sucker punches region already ravaged by Sandy."
No. The forecasters predicted this storm and the region got ready for it. "Sucker punch" is when you don't see it coming because there was no reason to expect it. Trust me on this one.
Johnny Moore, James Monroe Junior High, 8th grade. Eating through a straw for days.
I know sucker punch.

<  #65, Terry Dorsch

I got a call this morning from a dear friend we've known for almost 35 years to tell me her brother had been killed in a solo motorcycle crash yesterday. He had raced professionally for Triumph, so this was not a guy who didn't know how to ride. Sad for her.

I was ahead on my preps for Sunday so I decided to go play nine holes on the par-three course near our house this afternoon. On the way over a) it started to rain, and b) I learned that the Rambler's wipers don't work. They're vacuum operated and probably haven't been turned on for decades so I'm not surprised. I'm hoping they just need to be disassembled, cleaned, and put back together but dried and cracked diaphragms are a real possibility. If so I'll have to decide if I want to go to the trouble to repair/replace for the four days a year I might need them here in the Valley of the Sun.
And do I want to take Louise out in the rain??

Canned the golf and came back home to watch the garage door go all akimbo as it went up. The good news: after a trip to Home Depot, about $8, and 45 minutes of effort the busted wheel was replaced and it's working fine. They come in packages of two so I've got one ready for the next failure.

It's that time of year. With the cooler weather comes Sun City streets suddenly crowded with Buicks bearing Wisconsin plates driven by old people wearing those scary plastic sun glasses and doing 25 mph. It's terrifying out there. They pull into the left turn lane but then swing to the right, back into your lane, just before making the turn. Turn signals? Either two miles ahead of time or after braking to 3 mph.

Today here in Phoenix they had the sentencing hearing for Jared Loughner, the 23-year old man who killed six and wounded 13, including Rep. Gabriel Giffords in a shooting spree on Jan. 8, 2011. He got seven life sentences plus 140 years.

The hearing included victim impact statements by some of the wounded and family members of those who were killed. According to the news reports some of those victims expressed their rage at Loughner for his terrible actions.

No question, his actions were horrific. But one thing that's become clear in the almost two years since then is that Jared Loughner suffers from some of the most severe mental illness imaginable. He has no connection with reality and is only able to appear in court because the court has ordered that he be given large doses of very powerful psychotropic drugs. One might just as well rage against a stone as against Jared Loughner. He's not here. And he is not culpable for his actions. He is a victim, too, a victim of the same sin-cursed world that means people gunned down at a meet and greet at a grocery store.

I feel sorry for those people, and if expressing outrage for Loughner brings them some small measure of peace it's OK. As he stood a few feet away he was unaffected one way or the other, in a medication induced stupor immune from their vitriol. But I feel just as sad for him, and for his parents.
Everyone was a victim.