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Maestro Tamara Dworetz On Valentine's Day, the Las Vegas Philharmonic hosted an amazing female classical guitarist, Sharon Isbin , and an exhilarating female guest conductor, Tamara Dworetz . Both had full command of their roles, as well as the audience. It was delightful to see women in key positions. This is not an anti-male post . I greatly admire many male musicians and conductors. Pianist Andre Watts's version of Rachmanioff's Piano Concerto No. 2 made me, my son, and a

Bill and I are so disturbed by the world of today, we're escaping to the early 1980s with Hill Street Blues , an ensemble cop TV series that ran on NBC from 1981 to 1987. It now streams (for a price) on Amazon Prime, Apple, and Fandango. If you're not old enough to recall this series, it won a slew of awards back in its day. The writer/producer was Steven Bochco of later L.A. Law fame. Hill Street Blues was so acclaimed, even the show’s theme music became a hit. This was be

Ancestry keeps changing my ancestral origins. All along, I've been mostly Scottish, English, and Irish, but there were wee dabs of French and Swedish mixed in. I found those two dabs exciting. But now, they've moved my Swedish dabs. Turns out they're actually Danish and Finnish. And my French part dropped a percentage point. I can't keep up with myself. Sisu!

Erma Bombeck, author and humor columnist I’m old. That means I recall days when reading the morning newspaper was a ritual. That was how people were informed in the 1950s and 1960s, not misinformed, as too many are today by agenda-skewed social media or cable news. As a teen, my favorite newspaper sections were the cartoons and humor columns. That's a clue why I never became an investigative journalist. I did take a swing at writing a humor column for a small newspaper, but m

Just outside my grandmother’s lake cottage in western Michigan, there was a railroad track. As little kids visiting from Texas, my sister and I used to love hearing the locomotive coming twice a day. The roar of its engines, the haunting call of its horn, and the clickety-clack of the rail cars were magic to a child. And I fell in love with trains. After Bill and I married almost 20 years ago, we discovered a mutual desire to travel by train and eventually booked a 24-hour jo

August 26, 2025 — Ice and Fire : A Suspenseful Thriller Set in Hawai’i received positive praise in the Publishers Weekly "Book Life...

Just to let everyone know — and I'm very proud of myself — all four novels are now available on Audible . Each story, and sometimes each...

Yes, Las Vegas had a dust storm on July 1-2, 2025. No, it did not affect us. We live in Sun City Summerlin , about 20 minutes northwest...

A review of "Sharp Objects" on MAX After suffering through seven sultry, alcoholic, drug-induced episodes of " Sharp Objects" on Max , we...

In today's endless stream of horrifying news about the second Trump administration, the New York Times reports that 22,000 IRS employees ...

If you've read Out and In: A Mystery-Thriller , you know the ending leaves you begging for a sequel, but I dragged my feet completing it....

Winter in Las Vegas brings snow to the surrounding mountains, but milder temps in the valley. I really like living in Las Vegas, except...

When I first wrote this blog post, I thought I only had a female nesting, but now I see that it's a male and female pair of Anna's...

I could not believe that a daily newspaper in a city the size of Las Vegas (3 million) would endorse Donald Trump for president. But the...

As the Hubster and I sat down to breakfast at the Black Bear Diner this morning, the stereo speakers began streaming the song, “Dedicated...

I'm doing a total rewrite on my mystery ICE AND FIRE, the sequel to OUT AND IN. The rewrite was due to a law enforcement change in...

Newsweek magazine recently published an op-ed written by some sort of psycho-social PhD, titled "Taylor Swift is Not a Good Role Model."...

Below, I'm posting (with the author's permission) an article written by Heather Cox Richardson in response to media attacks on President...

This next week, I'd planned to send a PDF of ICE AND FIRE to beta readers and interested pals. ICE AND FIRE is a sequel to my...