Parker Stripped

It’s that time once again everyone – Christmas is coming soon, whether you like it or are ready for it or not. Most of our Christmases have a lot in common. From year to year we gather with friends and/or family, we eat and possibly drink too much, and of course we exchange gifts as well. The old tradition of …

We all live with a lot of noise. All the noise of our machines, like trucks, automobiles, motorcycles etc. Then there’s the noise that we constantly choose to listen to, since most of us are almost always connected to something. YouTube videos, streaming music, radio, TV. You name it, it’s there twenty-four hours a day, constantly pumping noise into our …

When do you stand firm and when do you compromise? Always a tough decision and during this election season it’s front and center in our lives. People love to criticize politicians for never taking a unpopular stand, but how many of us can distinguish between what’s really important and what’s trivial in our lives? Consider this quote: “Compromise where you …

Believe it or not this month’s column is deliberately late. Its lateness has even been approved by the editor. How cool is that? I, the guy who hates being late and almost always early, am now officially late! The reason it’s late is because I wanted to write about what I did on my Fall vacation. When I was a …

Last month I went to the annual Marine Raider Reunion (my father was a Raider in WW2, check out his site here) in Wilmington North Carolina. Needless to say the climate and culture is quite different back there when compared to good old Parker, AZ. When I’m in different places I like to learn new things if I can, and …

I’m just going to admit right up front here that this month’s column is going to be a bit of a rant. A well-deserved one to be sure. But I’ll do my best to keep myself more or less in control and try to actually have a good point to all this. What am I peeved about? If you are …

This month I’m doing the opposite of what we usually do. Normally if there’s a big holiday coming up we talk about it before it happens to prepare for it, or on that day so we can be timely and relevant. This month I’m neither timely or relevant because I’m going to talk about the Memorial Day holiday that we …

If you ask people what kind of age we live in today at some point most people will at least mention the information explosion that’s occurred via the internet. Today we know more than we ever had before. Average human knowledge doubles about every 13 months. Pretty amazing isn’t it? Obviously no one can keep up with this accumulation of …

“I can’t believe how fast this year is going!” I’ve both heard and said that a number of times lately. I hear people say that about all sorts of things. How fast their kids grow up, how old a certain celebrity is or how long ago a big event in their life happened. I find myself thinking and saying it …

So far this has been a pretty weird winter on the River. It seems like a lot of odd things have been happening, especially this flu bug that’s going around. I don’t recall ever seeing so many people catching a bug like this and then keeping it for so long. Not to mention everyone I know who’s gone two or …