Run-DMSteve

  • What’s in the mail?

    Ever since I left home, my father has been shipping me boxes of stuff. Sometimes he packs up pieces of our history. Sometimes he returns the book or the shirt or whatever it was I left behind on my last visit. Most times he ships the things he believes I…

  • More fun than I deserve

    Electric The Cult 1987 When I was younger I wanted to find a band that rocked as hard as AC/DC but that didn’t view women as subhuman breeding stock. A band that was as heavy as Led Zeppelin minus all the mystical claptrap. I don’t know if this band has…

  • Dogs make our life whole, unless they’re making us insane

    The naturalist Hal Borland wrote a memoir called The Dog Who Came to Stay. You can tell from the title how that story turned out. This story is not that story. In September we promoted a promising new player to our family: a 10-week-old corgi. We named her Xena, Warrior…

  • King me

    I can’t bid adieu to Scotland without bringing to your attention the Scotch influence on one of the world’s most popular games. Not golf, Mr. Spock. Checkers. The modern history of the game we North Americans call checkers began a thousand years ago on the Iberian Peninsula, where the Moors (the…

  • England forever, Scotland a wee bit longer

    England forever, Scotland a wee bit longer

    Weightlifting The Trashcan Sinatras 2004 In 1999, I edited a magazine for software company called Visio. One of my columnists was Dave, our Chief Technical Evangelist. Dave was a software maestro and the champion of all things Scottish. “Aye, Steve, it’s a hildy, wildy day, but I’ll wager there’ll be…