Opinion

One of my earliest memories was my mother’s voice. I was on her lap and she was reading to me. We were likely in our cottage by the sea with a fire blazing in the hearth. She had a good strong reading voice with...

I like cemeteries. That is not a ghoulish statement, or at least not meant to be. A cemetery is a walk through history, both recent and long ago, where the changing culture of a town, city or region is written on the headstones of...

When you were young did you ever run away from home? I had two older brothers that caused me to think real seriously about where I would go and what I would do if I were to ever leave my home and parents. Usually...

There is something about the silence of an empty house that is so comforting it is almost not empty at all. When the voices have left the building, the last car door has slammed and the final cup of tea has been consumed, the...

The good and bad aspects of choosing a title line (see above) for a column is once up there, the writer is bound to it throughout the piece. If the writer adheres to the subject of the title throughout all is well, but if...

About this time of year — February blending into March — I can get really sick and tired of winter. Folks back home might have a chortle at that; because, yeah, I know, we don’t really have “winter” per se in our neck of...

Good day! If you are a regular reader of my scribbles, then you know that a few weeks ago we lost the very best dog that has ever lived. Dirt was what a dog is supposed to be. As you might imagine, if you...

Last Sunday one of the readers of this column listened, patiently I suspect, to my not uncommon lament of having a deadline in the near future and not a single word written, whereupon he responded that I say that every week and every week...

Today is one of those days where the memories came flooding in. I got up and dressed in my usual attire — sweater, light jacket and paratrooper boots. That’s when I saw it, a Jump Certificate from Sky Dive Monterey. The name on the...

This has been a good week for cleaning out the old storage bin and start throwing away things that have been sent there to molder away. Of course they don’t just go away by themselves, so the city will be having a citywide garage...