By TY FREER
ty_freer(at)yahoo.com
I don’t care what sport you played, how long you participated, or how good you were: if you have ever played in any competitive sport, you have prayed for God’s help in determining the outcome, whether it be, “God, help me hit this free throw” or “Please don’t let me play please don’t […]

I’ve been very fortunate here at the cactus to have two incredible food writers. Lanie, and before her Michelle, kept my mind filled with recipes that — don’t tell them — are sometimes out of my league.
I can get Lanie’s butter column this week, but usually I read the recipe and just wonder and hope […]

By LANIE PIMENTEL
petunia5045(at)gmail.com
Two words. Compound butter. Much like the lesson taught in first grade where the children would go around the classroom naming compound words such as classroom, campground, and playground, the lesson of making a compound butter is the same as the word. Taking things that exists separately, and merging them to make a […]

BY DA SOUTHERN
dasouthern(at)gmail.com
Funny how sometimes you have to step back and look what is being imported to the good ole USofA from the Motherland… you know the one we fought for our independence? Well, if you don’t know history, just watch HBO’s John Adams that I wrote about a few weeks back.
No, I am talking about BBC […]

By BEN SZMANDA
A biography is the attempt to recreate the life of a subject. But this is a doomed project: There is no way to capture the complexity of a life without excluding other, possibly contradictory facts. As near as I can figure, this is the central point of Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot, where we […]

By CATHY S.
Sokocathy(at)gmail.com
The group of six was asked to sing Broadway hits written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The judges called it “the toughest night of the season.”
Syesha – One reader thought she had the best outfit of the night but was disappointed that she wore the same earrings she had worn once before. We […]