You could have been Orlando.

I have a confession: I tried to smother my mother-in-law.

It’s a Magic City for companion animals, too.

Sixty. I turn 60 years old this month. On March 28, I will have survived six decades.

What has happened to journalism? In Birmingham, at least, what has happened is that journalism is dead.

We do start 2016 in uncertain times. As of this writing, the end of 2015 was punctuated with terrorist events all over the world.

December is here, so it’s time for a Christmas column. I know, it’s cliché, but c’mon, Christmas dominates December. Heck, it dominates most of November. Still, these are the hardest columns for me to write.

I have a play date every Friday with two older women. Get your mind out of the gutter. This play date is with my wife and a former colleague and close friend from The Birmingham News.

I was a ghost. I may have been 10 or 11 years old. I was young, just a kid. And my mother, not wanting to spend too much time getting me ready for Halloween, threw an old white sheet over my head, cut out a couple of holes for my eyes and, voila, I was a ghost.

The buses roar. At about 3 p.m. every day, they pass by our house, leaving Glen Iris Elementary School two blocks north, and, packed with students waving and laughing, heading to wherever they’re going.