Life As We Know It with Tom Walton

Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum. I’ve got news for nature. So do I.

Take a look at your car keys. I’ll bet you’ve got several key tags identifying you as a lucky rewards program participant for a whole bunch of merchants.

HARDLY A week goes by that I don’t receive a survey request from a merchant or company I’ve done business with.

THIS MEMORIAL Day is the day the nation sets aside to remember our fallen heroes in wars and conflicts past.

If you spend any time on the Internet, you’ve been subjected to marketing tactics that can make it almost impossible to ignore the bait.

A Blade obituary a while back noted that the deceased had taken a rather unusual occupation late in his life: funeral greeter.

One of the most popular features of The Blade is the daily trivia challenge compiled by a friend and former colleague, Mike Kelly.

Guided by the philosophy that good people doing strange things makes a great story, I was steered to Steve Agler’s quest for a million pennies.

Nobody has to tell Zak Vassar the challenges he signed up for at the Toledo Symphony Orchestra.

The calendar says spring has arrived, but I’ll bet you still could use a reminder that warmer days are ahead.

The supermarket where we often shop, the Bowling Green Kroger’s, is nearly finished with a major expansion. Now you need a GPS to find your way around.

Your snowbird friends have all been enjoying warmer weather in Florida for months.

One of the outcomes of the presidential election is the return of vigorous public speech. The good old political protest.

Thanks to global warming, green -- the color of money -- is the new white in the Arctic Ocean. History was made several months ago in the Arctic. It was good history if you are in the tourism business in Alaska and northern Canada. It was bad history if you’re into environmental protection.

It's been a while since I got up on my soap box to complain about abuse of the language and improper grammar, so please indulge me while I vent. The target of my distress today? The habit of people who should know better to misuse words such as “amazed,” or “surprised,” or one of my favorites, “appalled.”

Several years ago, when Frank Horton was the president of the University of Toledo, he was chatting with a small group of people, including me, about the desire of many UT students for more parking lots and parking spaces on campus.

For years I have had this little mental exercise where I contemplate what food I would least like to give up for the rest of my life.

What is it about leaving a voice mail message that befuddles us so? Comments that might sound pithy or clever in a face-to-face, two-way conversation tend to lose their zip when we are speaking all by ourselves into someone else’s telephone.

I have decided that when it’s necessary to make a list of my lists, it’s time to reevaluate my life and daily routine.

As America prepares to inaugurate a President who at least half the country doesn’t like, there’s a widely shared presumption that Donald Trump will be erratic on his good days and dangerous on his bad days.

A few months ago I spoke of the dramatic and undeniable changes in the newspaper industry and noted that dwindling home delivery circulation did not necessarily mean fewer readers. Newspapers, including The Blade, adapted, and their websites are visited by millions of Americans every day.

Now that we’ve all turned the page, literally, on 2016, and America has elected a change agent who will take office in just 18 days, the national mood is a mix of hope and apprehension.

In 13 days Americans will pause to take note of the 15th anniversary of 9/11. It will be another milestone anniversary and an appropriate time to ask: has America moved on? Should it?

If you are like me, you had a Viewmaster toy as a kid. Even if you are not like me, you had a Viewmaster toy as a kid. What an amazing experience it was to put the Viewmaster viewer to your face and gaze upon the miracle of 3-D.

There are expressions we all use in modern and polite conversation that I’ve often wondered about. One of them is the ubiquitous phrase “have a nice day.” We hear it from someone and we use it ourselves almost every day. It’s a pleasant way to end a conversation without the awkward silence that could otherwise occur. But it’s a comment I’ve always had an issue with.