Will researchers ever make up their minds? Time and time again, a researcher or team of researchers releases a study saying that something is bad for us. Or that something is good for us. Then, months later, another study is released saying it isn’t. It’s happened twice in just the last couple of months. Nothing exemplifies this better than egg studies. Researchers said for years that eggs were bad for us. They were high in cholesterol, would clog our arteries like sludge in a garden hose and cause us to keel over any minute. Eating eggs was Omelet Roulette. Two eggs sunny side up might as well have been twin gun barrels pointed at our livers. Then a…
Tim Woodward is a longtime Idaho columnist. His columns appear one Sunday a month, often more frequently, in The Idaho Press and are posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays.
Posts by Tim Woodward
Living quietly in a west Boise mobile home park is a man whose surroundings give few hints of his former life in the inner circle of stardom. The mobile home is much like those around it – neatly kept, flowers out front. Step inside and you’ll see a spacious living room with comfortable furniture and a big-screen television. The only clue to its owner’s career are two guitars on stands. His name is Bobby Gibson. He’s 84 years old, and though the term is typically used for the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and other pop stars, he is, in his own way, a guitar god. “There’s really nothing to playing the guitar,” he jokes. “After the first 50 or…
The three most popular toys for nine-year-old boys, according to an online site versed in such things, are an Anki Cosmo Robot, a Lego Tech Whack Building Kit and a Nerf Official N-strike Elite Strong-Arm Blaster. I have only the vaguest idea of what any of those things are. No surprise there; I have only a vague idea of how to use most of the things on my Smart Phone. Nor do I have more than even a vague memory of what comprised my ninth-birthday loot. A baseball glove, perhaps; maybe some model-railroad accessories or the gift sure to disappoint all nine-year-old boys – school clothes. Landon Palmer’s birthday gifts included books about American presidents, a presidential trivia card game…
It’s not true that inanimate objects can’t speak to us. I realized this recently during the annual rite of getting-the-back-yard-ready-for-summer. The yard had gone unattended and virtually ignored for months. Weeds were sprouting, the lawn needed mowing, the deck was cluttered with lawn furniture and other oddments stored for the winter. All were covered with a formidable layer of grunge. The luxury of procrastinating was over. A public television crew was coming by to get my input for a documentary about Idaho, and the producer had suggested doing the filming in the back yard. It was time to get to work. Normally it’s a job I detest. But in freeing the summer yard art from winter storage in the garage, something…
It isn’t really Pinto Bennett’s last Saturday night. But it’s close enough that he can see it coming. “The Last Saturday Night” is the country singer-songwriter’s newest album, his fourteenth. The newest and probably the last. “I figured the one I made before it would be the last one,” he said. “When my producer asked me if I wanted to do another album I said, ‘aren’t there any young people out there who want to record an album?’ He said ‘yeah, but I want to make a Pinto Bennett album.’ “I called it ‘The Last Saturday Night’ because it just felt like it. I can’t do this any more. My health and my brain won’t let me. I…
If you’ve driven the desolate stretches of desert that comprise much of Idaho and its neighboring states, you know something about boredom. The highways are straight as a string, the scenery monotonous, the nearest towns so far away you wonder if you’ll ever get to them. There was a time, however, when signs dotting the West’s sagebrush immensities brought humor to some of the most desolate places imaginable. Those who remember them know exactly what I’m talking about – the Fearless Farris Stinker signs. Now, for those who never knew the iconic signs as well as those who remember them fondly but would like to know more about them, there’s a new book. “Fearless,” by Idaho historian and author Rick Just, tells…
My wife had a milestone birthday recently and chose to celebrate it by taking the kids and grandkids on a once-in-a-lifetime cruise. I was in favor of taking them on a rail trip – less expensive and no seasickness – but it was her birthday. We looked first at cruises from California to Mexico, thinking they’d be cheap. Surprisingly, Caribbean cruises were less expensive. And they left from New Orleans, one of our favorite cities. Cheaper and New Orleans as a bonus? No contest. There was just one problem. Mardi Gras. Our travel agent warned us to reserve rooms right away because hotels would be filling up quickly. This was in December, almost three months before Mardi Gras. She obviously…
Two Idahoans have made cartoon history in one of the nation’s prominent publications. They did it by winning a contest. There are contests, and there are contests. Winning a karaoke contest or the office March Madness pool is one thing. It’s quite another to win, say, the Pillsbury Bakeoff, an essay contest, the National History Day Contest … Or the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. The New Yorker, for readers unfamiliar with it, is a weekly magazine that publishes, among other things, commentary, journalism, essays, fiction, poetry and cartoons. Indicative of its range, its contributors have included John Updike, James Thurber, Joan Didion, Annie Proulx, Phillip Roth, Ogden Nash, Garrison Keillor, Joyce Carol Oates and Groucho Marx, to name a…
The guest of honor had to be coaxed into opening his birthday presents and blowing out candles. He was having too much fun playing on the cargo nets at Planet Kid. The guest of honor was my great grandson, who was turning five. I was not ready to be a great grandfather when he was born any more than my daughter was ready to be a grandmother in her mid-30s. We were too young – no canes, no hearing aids, no long white beard. But there he was, ready or not, and life hasn’t been the same since. Nothing like a new kid to shake things up. As he opened his birthday gifts, it struck me how different life is…
The poltergeist that haunts my house has a new name now: Casper, after the protagonist of the “Casper the Friendly Ghost” cartoon series. A recent column about the poltergeist that inhabits the Woodward residence cited instances in which keys, a cell phone, a robe and other common items vanished for months, even years, only to reappear in plain sight. It asked, only half jokingly, if readers could recommend a good exorcist and encouraged them to share their own poltergeist stories. I didn’t really expect much in the way of responses. How many people, after all, even believe in ghosts these day? And how many would actually have stories about them, let alone be willing to share them? Well, let me tell you…