Opinion

Have you noticed that we have a bunch of folks that have too much time on their hands? It wouldn’t be so bad if they used this extra time to do something good, but they seem hell-bent to destroy neighborhoods. By the way, they...

It was finally Show Time, and I was so excited. Not only was I doing a book signing with my oldest friend in my hometown on the East Coast of England, but the book was also based on our childhoods growing up in this...

My friend from Salinas works for Monterey County and is a proverbial animal nut like me. She contacted me one day and told me that her husband had been working out on Metz Road and the residents there had told him about a stray...

To the Editor: Last week I wrote a guest column on the Western Flyer, the legendary boat that took John Steinbeck and Doc Ricketts to the sea of Cortez in 1940. A reader pointed out it wasn’t all about community, that Carol Steinbeck helped a great...

As I sat on the shore watching my old friend and my daughter cavorting on paddleboards in the early morning sun, the North Sea an unusually flat blue millpond of joy, I could not help the envy rising inside and it was not a...

Here we are, another week or month of information that we have compiled as we go through the days and nights of life. Today I would like to mention a new member of my family. No, it’s not me nor is it any of...

How was your week? Mine was pretty great. Shoot, it should have been. After all, I was turning 80, and if you can’t have a good time on your 80th birthday, when are you going to have fun? Like most good things that happen to...

By my reckoning 140 years, give or take, of my family’s timeline was spent in prisons; the years accumulated by my parents, a brother and his wife, a niece and myself. And it seems the family occupation within the California Department of Corrections (CDC;...

As the first column of a new year on the ol’ Gregorian Calendar, one could hold the expectation that the tradition of making resolutions, presumably of personal betterment, containing a goal or goals. The history of this tradition is fascinating, and if you are...

Garden serenity is getting difficult in the afternoons with the dual challenge of ever-rising temperatures and afternoon winds that seem like they’re powerful enough to give Dorothy another trip to Oz. The morning and evening calms, however, make it all worth it. For those who...