Opinion

Most of us know sunflowers. In the Salinas Valley, they are a common sight in yards and fields up and down and across the land. Many among us remember rows of the tall, large yellow blooms were spaced among the row crops as wind...

When you are crawling toward 24 years of marriage and over 26 together, the fireworks are not always going off, unless the neighbor decides that the Fourth of July cannot come soon enough. You are mostly like two comfortable-ish chairs, grumbling about the thing...

The Carnegie Classification is a leading framework for recognizing the diversity of U.S. higher education institutions. Last fall, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching updated the framework of classifications and now includes a new category — “Research Colleges and Universities” — which...

To the Editor: Recently I visited my grandparents resting place at the Soledad Cemetery. What a huge improvement since earlier this year. I wish I had gotten the gentleman’s name who was trimming the trees, but kudos to him and his crew for their efforts. As...

How did my child just turn 26? It sometimes feels as if it was yesterday that she popped into the world. I recall so clearly the labor — 24 hours and counting in all, before they cut her out of me (when initially I...

For today’s column I cite Joe Mathews as main source. Joe writes the California Connected column for Arizona State University’s publication Zocalo Public Square (which is redundant as a zocalo is a public square, but I digress). Instead of taking a dramatic approach where I...

Every fine time is far more enjoyable if first one experiences some minor hardships along the way. As I write I am sitting on a second-floor balcony at the Hotel Lake Maggiori in Locarno, Ticino, Switzerland. It is 10 minutes after four in the...

If I were to offer up a descriptive sentence regarding the city’s newly upgraded main thoroughfare, it would be peppered with adjectives leading to superlatives and culminating with comparatives; i.e. “Like the revitalization seen in Old Town in Salinas, the City of King is...

Well, this is a fine kerfuffle. I had already decided what and whom I would write about this week. I try to do that every week but occasionally I have to call or email and beg Ryan, our esteemed editor of all things printed,...

I was reading about the origins of Christmas and the various ways the day is celebrated around the world. It is a day with a history that originally involved more than a few countries and belief systems. What we know today as Christmas has...