http://denver.yourhub.comThe latest blog posts in The Denver Newspaper Agency YourHub.comen-usnews@yourhub.com(c) 2009, YourHub.com5Most of my friends and I are at that stage of life where we give thanks for making it through another day and know that we shouldn't buy anything on time or plan much beyond making a three minute egg. Still, when one of us dies, it is a shock and the pain of loss is no less great. One of my be...http://denver.yourhub.com/HighlandsRanch/Blogs/Archive/Blog~492337.aspx7/4/2008 2:26:57 PMJames Syring Most of my friends and I are at that stage of life where we give thanks for making it through another day and know that we shouldn't buy anything on time or plan much beyond making a three minute egg. Still, when one of us dies, it is a shock and the pain of loss is no less great. One of my be...http://denver.yourhub.com/Littleton/Blogs/Archive/Blog~492336.aspx7/4/2008 2:08:56 PMJames Syring Most of my friends and I are at that stage of life where we give thanks for making it through another day and know that we shouldn't buy anything on time or plan much beyond making a three minute egg. Still, when one of us dies, it is a shock and the pain of loss is no less great. One of my be...http://denver.yourhub.com/LoneTree/Blogs/Archive/Blog~492334.aspx7/4/2008 1:57:38 PMJames Syring Most of my friends and I are at that stage of life where we give thanks for making it through another day and know that we shouldn't buy anything on time or plan much beyond making a three minute egg. Still, when one of us dies, it is a shock and the pain of loss is no less great. One of my be...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~492330.aspx7/4/2008 1:26:17 PMJames Syring Only recently, I was a political prisoner, held captive and subjected to a constant stream of indoctrination and propaganda meant to make me a good party member. Well, OK. That may be a little over the top. I wasn't freezing various appendages off in some Siberian gulag; the truth is I was mer...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~439317.aspx3/9/2008 9:17:02 PMJames Syring Do you really want to raise the CSAP scores? The answer is easy. Don't allow stupid people to have children and then foist them off on Colorado schools. You think I'm kidding? You don't have to be a sociologist to understand the relationship between stupid parents and kids who don't do well in s...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~353081.aspx8/26/2007 10:07:40 PMJames Syring Thank goodness our millionaire mayor is so committed to seeing that Denver's homeless have housing, because when hizzoner gets done raising my property taxes to fund everything, I'll be one more addition to the homeless statistics. I'm sorry, but I'm tired of us homeowners being the ones to bea...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~341279.aspx7/30/2007 8:02:33 PMJames Syring I need your help. I'm entering into the twilight of my life. I should be paying attention to immediate, small things like making sure my shoelaces are tied and my fly is zipped up before I leave the house to wander aimlessly through the neighborhood. Instead, I persist in wondering about some of...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~339796.aspx7/26/2007 3:37:03 PMJames Syring OK, people. Listen up! I only want to go over this lesson one time. I don't want to have to come back and repeat myself. We've just had a police shooting here in town resulting in the death of a young man. Whenever the victim is not a career bad guy, I hear murmurings from people, " Couldn't t...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~337015.aspx7/19/2007 7:54:33 PMJames Syring I scraped my "Proud to be an American" decal off the back of my truck tonight. A friend had given it to me shortly after 9/11. I displayed it proudly all these years but I would be a liar and a hypocrite if I continued to display it. I've always been a fan of the British, especially when they ...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~333623.aspx7/12/2007 12:17:10 AMJames Syring Grow up, Denver! When I moved here more than 30 years ago from New York City, I loved the small town, western feel of Denver. Oil was still king and the cowboy boots and Stetsons on 17 th Street proved it daily. Some of the old downtown buildings still stood as symbols of what the Queen City of...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~330161.aspx7/3/2007 4:54:08 PMJames Syring Ever since the Larry Manzanares stories first made news, I kept thinking about writing on the subject but for some reason I kept putting it off. Now I'm glad I didn't join in the feeding frenzy that took place. I didn't know Mr. Manzanares but I served on a jury in his court when he was a D...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~326470.aspx6/25/2007 11:05:39 PMJames Syring I've been following the flap over the gang presence at the City Park summer concerts and I can't believe what I'm reading and hearing. Maybe the smoke from the bongs of the folks up in the People's Republic of Boulder drifted down and made the citizens of Denver more than a mile high. Wacky to...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~323615.aspx6/18/2007 11:30:43 PMJames Syring My wife, Ginny, and I went to the Art Students League of Denver Summer Market this past weekend. We go to about six art shows a year and the League's Summer Market is one of our favorites. My personal preferences these days are for landscapes and western and southwestern themes but I grew up i...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~320197.aspx6/11/2007 11:41:12 PMJames Syring May 26, 2007 marked what would have been the 100th birthday of Marion Michael Morrison . The baby born in 1907 in Winterset, Iowa, became known to Americans and movie fans worldwide as John Wayne . Some of you know that I am a western movie fan. Being a western movie fan automatically make...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~317385.aspx6/4/2007 9:18:48 PMJames Syring I was editing a draft of an article about celebrity in The United States when the news broke about the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech. My immediate reaction was, "My God, not another one." With news updates of the rising death toll as background sound, I decided to write about why this count...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~295409.aspx4/16/2007 8:56:08 PMJames Syring As an intrepid reporter for YourHub.com, I'd like to think that I have a wealth of insider information. The truth is, I'm lucky that I have people who are willing to help me. A good example is my neighbor Gloria and her husband, Kaylor. Gloria is a news and politics maven and Kaylor knows everyb...http://denver.yourhub.com/Montbello/Blogs/Archive/Politics/Local-State-Politics/Blog~291295.aspx4/9/2007 1:22:45 PMJames Syring As an intrepid reporter for YourHub.com, I'd like to think that I have a wealth of insider information. The truth is, I'm lucky that I have people who are willing to help me. A good example is my neighbor Gloria and her husband, Kaylor. Gloria is a news and politics maven and Kaylor knows everyb...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Politics/Local-State-Politics/Blog~291246.aspx4/9/2007 12:57:30 PMJames Syring As an intrepid reporter for YourHub.com, I'd like to think that I have a wealth of insider information. The truth is, I'm lucky that I have people who are willing to help me. A good example is my neighbor Gloria and her husband, Kaylor . Gloria is a news and politics maven and Kaylor know...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Politics/Local-State-Politics/Blog~291180.aspx4/9/2007 12:14:14 PMJames Syring When I lived in the Far East, a Japanese woman whose impression of the United States had been formed by American movies of the 1940's and 1950's, told me that her vision of the U.S. was that every town looked like New York City and all the inhabitants wore ten gallon hats and carried guns. From ...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~284335.aspx3/26/2007 4:14:29 PMJames Syring Recently, a Colorado Health Department study ranked the air quality in Aspen as worse than Fort Collins, Greeley and even areas of heavily populated Denver. It just proves what I have long believed. Aspen is a toxic waste site. Now, before you roll your eyes in disbelief or exasperation, remem...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~259033.aspx3/5/2007 9:46:40 PMJames Syring Extinction. Almost every day we learn about another species getting knocked off and joining dinosaurs, passenger pigeons and dodo birds. Let's face reality. A pigeon is a pigeon and considered a flying rat by many city dwellers. A bird named dodo probably didn't have much of a chance for surviva...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~255633.aspx2/26/2007 3:22:08 PMJames Syring Our National Congress, lead by the new Democratic majority, is on its way to passing a weak rebuke to the President's war policy that does nothing to stop the escalation of the troops being sent into the maelstrom that is the Middle East but will allow the Democrats to say to their constituents,...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~182823.aspx2/13/2007 4:20:49 PMJames Syring Long ago, when society didn't worry about children's self-esteem and it was considered necessary not only to have competition but also to keep score, there was the report card. Today, we don't want children to have their feelings hurt or their ego's bruised, so, we don't keep score in games and...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~178771.aspx2/4/2007 4:44:32 PMJames Syring You see them in every bookstore. Those self-help books with the intriguing titles that tell you to follow your bliss and do what you love and the money will come rolling in. Dream on, friends. What I love to do is sit on my couch sipping cheap red wine and watching old movies. I'd like one of th...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~177147.aspx1/30/2007 9:54:32 PMJames Syring Hi, Everyone. Thanks for showing up. If you don't mind, to get started, I'd like to get a show of hands. Would everyone who still has ice ruts on their block that could pass for a bobsled run, please raise their hand. OK. Let me see. One, two, three...two hundred thousand eighty-one, eighty-two,...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~173490.aspx1/21/2007 11:33:03 PMJames Syring Recently, I watched The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on television. It is one of my favorite movies but not one that I would classify as a western as a few compilers of western movies have. For those of you who are unaware, the author of the book from which the movie was made was B. Traven,...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~171239.aspx1/16/2007 2:41:35 PMJames Syring If there is a false prophet and overrated philosopher in American letters it is Henry David Thoreau . How did he become a symbol of the American spirit and someone for people to model their lives after? He was no giant of individuality; he was a freeloader and a bum. His so-called philosophy...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~168298.aspx1/8/2007 9:42:53 PMJames Syring The period when we acknowledge the passing of a year gone by and welcome a new year is a dangerous time. For many of us, that look back over the past year conjures up many negative memories. The wrong turns we made on our life path. The opportunities we missed. The chance we had to meet a new fr...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~165655.aspx1/1/2007 1:39:34 PMJames Syring My memories of the Christmas Holidays of my childhood do not evoke the Norman Rockwell paintings of happy families gathered for a family feast that graced the covers of The Saturday Evening Post of my youth. I always thought Rockwell's people inhabited some distant and unreachable land. Fo...http://denver.yourhub.com/DenverSouth/Blogs/Archive/Blog~164532.aspx12/26/2006 9:59:56 PMJames Syring