Opinion

Many times, over the past five decades I drove between Southern California and the Salinas Valley on El Camino Real, aka the 101, and so am very acquainted with the stretch of asphalt from Santa Barbara to SoMoCo. Now, like motorists everywhere finding a...

It’s 3:17 a.m. early Wednesday morning, nine hours before deadline for this column and I haven’t 1,000 cohesive words anywhere in my head: not a scintilla of theme. This is not often the case when offering this column on a weekly basis (or is...

Did you get to see the blowout by the Eagles? My beautiful bride and I watched it until we started to think it was a lost cause and then we took a little nap. After the game, I took out the trash. It was...

Mother’s Day just passed us by in America and Australia. England celebrates theirs in March. Why the world can’t align days like this, I will never know. It’s probably along the lines of why humanity can’t get along with humanity; but I digress. My...

Some of you must be wondering how I got such a high-paying job with such little experience. Well, since I have been doing this for a few years, I thought I would fill you in. It has been a long time since I begged...

I was up in the Arroyo Seco Canyon with a friend the other day, we had made our way down to the river, what there is of it, a stagnant pool here and there was about all; my friend oversees the property and we...

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;...

The Covid-19 pandemic has dominated the headlines for 18 months — and rightly so. But there is another respiratory virus that still demands our full attention. I’m referring to the all-too-common influenza, a viral infection that can be deadly, especially in high-risk groups. The flu...

It was only a couple of years ago when this whole brouhaha about masks and maintaining a proper distance between you and your loved ones started that I wasn’t too concerned. We Americans have faced plenty of tough times during the past 200-plus years....

Do you have grandchildren? I am blessed with two wonderful grandchildren and one great-grandson. I love it when they come over and I can dazzle them with my stories of where I have been and what I have done. I also keep a little...