The man who raped and murdered Deana Bowdoin was put to death by the state of Arizona on May 11 at 10:30 a.m. This was 44 years, four months and four days after the homicide in question — or about 44 years too long by my reckoning.

T.S. Eliot made the celebrated observation that “April is the Cruelest Month” in his critically acclaimed poem “The Wasteland,” published in 1922. A century later, a small group of U.S. senators gathered late in that cruel month to formulate a cruel fate for our nation.

She served as Maricopa County attorney for 900 days, the first woman to hold the office.

Mother. One small word. One universal meaning. We are all bound by the shared realty that we had or have a mother. This is a central person in our lives. The foundation of our history. A huge part of our personal journey and earliest memories. She is the reason that we are here and the perso…

Life sometimes presents signs that you have completely given up on your youth. An example: You proudly present your AARP card to request a senior discount at the restaurant where you’re having dinner… at 4:45 on a Saturday afternoon.

Would you marry your pet?

Multi-entertainer Steve Allen should earn posthumous praise as a “20th century Renaissance man.”

Where there is smoke, there is fire.

Let the record show that in mid-April 2022, I became incredibly hip according to the style gods at the New York Times. My secret? The shaved head I have been sporting since I lost a bet in 1999.

Mickey Mouse has turned Leftist Louse…due to circumstances beyond his control, and the long love affair that Disney has enjoyed with almost every American family appears headed for the rocks. The company has chosen to go “woke,” and that decision could conceivably leave the entertainment gia…

Think of him as the “anti-Ike.”

Uh oh, it’s allergy season. “Achoo!” Excuse me, dear readers, because it seems I cannot stop sneezing! And I guess I am not alone.

Two unofficial events have become part of the political calendar every autumn of each election year.

Forbes went to great trouble to assemble its annual list of billionaires, and the rankings received a ton of media coverage, including here in the Valley, where 10 Arizonans made the list.

Are you ready? Because the deadline for filing your taxes is looming, causing quite a few Americans to become upset (if they owe) or happy (if a refund is coming). Since people tend to procrastinate, the ones who owe money usually file at the last minute, request an extension, or rush to the…

“You like me! You really like me!”

Did you watch the fight last week? Oops, I meant the punch (more like a slap) that Will Smith planted on Chris Rock during the Oscars. While I don’t really care too much about award shows, it was a doozy of an altercation between two very big stars. Yikes, then there was the profanity and sc…

My initial response to witnessing Will Smith’s “Slap Heard Around the World” at the Academy Awards was embarrassment for Smith. Not for his absurd display of machismo and profane tirade against comedian Chris Rock but for how woefully ineffective the slap was.

I saw a spider. I went to the bathroom at 2 in the morning and there, sitting on a wall, was a big brown spider. She had eyes like the devil, glaring at me. It so unnerved me that I ran into the bedroom and told my husband, Doug, to please get up. “A spider is in the bathroom,” I yelled. He …

As we head toward April and the Arizona legislative session winds down, the fierce competition for the dumbest idea yet appears to be over. This year’s honors go to Apache Junction Rep. John Fillmore for his tireless efforts to destroy the state’s voting system with his masterpiece, now know…

ESPN is headed for a reckoning.

Brother, can you spare a dime? Actually, $30 trillion might help. The national debt boggles the mind and is causing panic in the hearts of citizens throughout the land. It seems our government has been printing and spending lots of money. And yes, both political parties seem to enjoy this fo…

Comedian Robert Klein offers a lament for laughs, regretting that life does not come with an audible soundtrack.

Somewhere in this sprawling state of ours, there are precisely 849 people that I would like to meet. I’ll buy a cup of coffee, a beer, lunch, steak dinner for two. Whatever it takes to have one of these 849 individuals sit down with me for a few minutes, the length of a simple conversation.

The white house sits across the street from the window fronting my desk. Not much distinguishes the place from the rest of the block where I moved two weeks ago. Four orange trees, their trunks painted white, line the east edge of the driveway. 

In 2008, Arizona resident David Bock slipped and broke his leg and ankle in multiple places. While waiting to have surgery on the leg, Bock started to feel ill, then he developed unexplained shortness of breath.

Sports. We have been able to sit back and watch the greatest shows on Earth. The WP Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale, the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics. 

“What you’re about to read is a vision of the future,” the teacher told her class.

When I was a kid, the fastest way to get me to read a book was to tell me it was too mature for my young eyes. I passed many nights sneaking peeks at my mom’s Harold Robbins novels to find the sexy parts. And there wasn’t a kid in my middle school who couldn’t recite by heart from Page 85 of…

One of Peoria’s greatest attributes is that we are a safe community with low crime and a strongly supported police department. When compared to 24 similar cities across the nation, Peoria continues to have some of the lowest crime rates, making our city one of the safest in the nation.

One century, one decade and one year separate us from the birth of Ronald Reagan. With each passing day, especially in these troubling times, we are reminded of Reagan’s basic goodness and yes, greatness.

Having made it this far in life without landing on death row, I feel confident a lethal injection won’t be my fate. With that said, I have my last meal all picked out: a large pepperoni pizza from any restaurant not named Domino’s or Papa John’s. 

How was your Valentine’s Day? Hope you had time to buy (or receive) flowers (red, of course), a box of chocolates and a wonderful bottle of champagne. We celebrate the “most romantic day of the year” that actually started in the fifth century as a pagan holiday.

If a murder mystery is called a “whodunit,” what should we call the curious events surrounding Election Day 2020?

What are you doing this Sunday? Let me guess, you might be joining about 100 million other Americans to watch the Super Bowl, where the Bengals and Rams lock horns (no pun intended). 

Have you ever been lost? Yes, I guess at some time or another most of us have taken a wrong turn, had trouble following directions, or just gotten mixed up about where we are headed. Being a Realtor and often in rural areas, sometimes I find that street signs do not exist, easements are not …

From the countless years of Little League and school sports for my kids to my service to the Cactus League and the Peoria Diamond Club before that, baseball has been a big part of my life for many years.  

United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced his upcoming retirement on a Wednesday morning. Within the hour, reporters, pundits and politicos had settled on a must for the 83-year-old’s successor: The next justice, the 116th in the history of our nation, must be a Black woman.

As your representative in Congress, my top priority is to ensure that the people of Arizona’s eighth congressional district receive quality constituent services. 

There’s no mistaking Mark Kelly for the late comedian Don Knotts — especially since our junior senator bears an uncanny resemblance to Uncle Fester of “The Addams Family” — but similar themes have emerged in the body of work from both the contemporary legislator and the comedian of a bygone era.

Arizona’s current drought is coming up on 15 years and has surpassed the worst drought in more than 110 years of official recordkeeping. Arizona’s water reservoirs are severely depleted, and according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, nearly 99% of Arizona is in some sort of drought.