WC ventures into the email bin

WC Answers Your Questions, Winter 2023 Edition


WC’s mailbag is bulging, and includes several followup emails asking why WC hasn’t responded to earlier emails. There’s the usual collection of threats, obscenity-laced criticism, inquiries far beyond WC’s pay grade and implied questions. WC has selected a few to answer. Why are you picking on skunks, rabid or otherwise?WC compared U.S. Rep. George Santos…

Mind How You Go


Five months before he died, Terry Pratchett wrote five letters, sealed them in envelopes and locked them in the safe in his office to be opened after his death. This was the one he addressed to me. Wiltshire 4th October 2014 Dear Rob, So. I have gone. There were days when I felt I had already gone…

Following Up and Following Down: June 2022


We’re halfway through 2022 and WC can’t even get the year right in his documents. Heck, half the time WC can’t even get the day of the week right. But, ready or not, it’s time to have a look back at the last month, touching on developments, worrying about missed stuff and working through whatever…

What’s Wrong With America, Part 1


Several readers have asked WC what he thinks is at the heart of all the problems facing America. It’s more than one thing, of course. But with this post, WC introduces a new, semi-regular series, using only photographs to illustrate the problem. When ignorance is held out as desirable, by persons in authority, yeah, it’s…

Following Up and Following Down: March 2022


Wait, it’s the end of March already? How did that happen? WC is still struggling to remember to write the current year and it’s already a quarter over? WC has summer afternoons in junior high school that lasted longer than March 2022. But here we are, the month gone by, and time for a look…

Notes from 37,000 Feet


It’s an 11.5 hour flight from San Francisco, California to Tokyo, Japan. Technically, it’s a day long flight, since you cross the International Date Line and arrive a full day later than you started. Here are some notes from WC’s flight. WC left Boise, Idaho. That town is located on the Boise River, which flows…

Jeff MacNelly's Best Political Cartoon

A Modest Recognition of Competence


WC might have been critical of the Internal Revenue Service from time to time. WC might have suggested they were vengeful and incompetent. Partly that’s because at one point in WC’s legal career, WC developed a specialized practice in discharging what is supposed to be undischargeable federal income taxes. Ordinarily, if you file bankruptcy you…

Following Up and Following Down: January 2022


It’s a new year but it’s the same old same old. See for yourself: Convicted criminal and Idaho Governor wannabe Ammon Bundy has been in the news. Reportedly, he wants to use his gubernatorial campaign efforts as his court-mandated community service. After Bundy’s conviction in July of misdemeanor trespassing and resisting or obstructing officers at…

Bragging on Mrs. WC, Hieronymous Bosch Edition


A brief photo story, without much explanation beyond the photo captions. Mrs. WC enjoys jigsaw puzzles and is very good at them. An example. This is “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” the most famous – and strangest – painting by Flemish artist Hieronymous Bosch: She worked on the puzzle only intermittently, not continuously. Patient, skilled…

How WC’s Mind Works: Hans Island


For those who may be interested, here’s an annotated blog post illustrating how WC’s mind works in finding topics for and writing this blog. We start from one of Howard Weaver’s Facebook posts: That’s a nice meme. Wonder if it’s true? (A few minutes on Google) Huh. Hans Island, in the Kennedy Channel, between Ellesmere…

It Turns Out “Woke” Isn’t New in Alaska


Harry Badger arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska before it was Fairbanks, when there was little more there than E.T. Barnette’s recently erected trading post, Barnette’s Cache. Newly appointed Territorial Judge James Wickersham described Barnette’s cache: A rough log structure, with spread-eagle wings [that] looked like a disreputable pig sty, but was in fact, Barnette’s trading post,…

Looking Back

Following Up and Following Down: October 2021


So much for October. WC is still trying to recover from a sugar-rush haze that’s a consequence of left over Hallowe’en candy. But here’s the usual month-end summary of followup, overlooked and discarded info that’s made its way into WC’s short-term attention span. As ever, no journalism has been committed in writing this blog post.…