Author: Steve Ainslie

My region’s local independent newspaper, the IndyWeek, announced in May 2023 that it was being managed by a new partner, the Assembly, with the goal of it eventually being acquired by the Assembly. Given the bleak state of newspapers and their continuous contraction across the US, I did not welcome this announcement. I grew up…

Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s. The 10 Commandments were drilled into my head as a child being raised Catholic. One thing I learned back then from family,…

I have been unable to news coverage of the wildfires in Maui and the devastation they have caused. Disasters like this are “made for news” events. Stories of tragedy, rescues, public safety failures, finger pointing and opinions will dominate the news for at least a few days – until the next new tragedy takes over…

I had a problem with my blog a few days ago. While troubleshooting, I temporarily disabled some plug-ins until I was able to isolate and resolve the issues. When I re-enabled them, I did not realize that I needed to reconfigure my “captcha” plug-in used to verify users on my contact page. I realized this…

There’s a woman who I see at the pool several times each week who is absolutely stunning. I’m not going to describe her other than to say she once graced me with a big smile when we shared a lane that made my heart skip a beat. I’m not ashamed to say that I look…

Another neighbor moved away without saying goodbye. Usually I am not surprised when someone I see regularly is leaving because I’ll see a “For Sale” sign on their property at least a few weeks before they are gone. This time was different. This neighbor was a 30-something married couple who lived a block away. During…

I have been reading “The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction” which is a collection of essays, speeches, introductions and articles written by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman is a prolific author of horror novels, short stories, graphic novels and fantasy books. The book was on the “librarian recommended” shelf at the library. Since I had…

My bedroom has an en suite bathroom, which is something I rarely enjoyed in my previous homes. We had them, but I always let my wife take over master bathroom and used the guest bathroom for me. Now that I live alone, that’s no longer the case. Lately I’ve been getting annoyed by the bathroom…

Two years ago I wrote about limiting contact with a friend who had become intolerably self-centered. Since then, we’ve fallen into a cadence of a weekly catch up call. After a call last week, I realized, with some chagrin, that once again we spent an entire hour on the phone and never spoke once about…

I forgot my wedding anniversary again this year just like I did during many of the 19 years I was “officially” married – despite the fact that my mom gave me a wedding gift of a bronze platter with the date embossed on it to remind me. One reason why this date was unimportant to…