Opinion

The next two week’s Funny Papers were about one-third written; they touched upon two subjects of which I had enough knowledge to write first drafts and then follow up with first-hand information. But a nagging little pain in my neck on Thursday morn had...

The Covid-19 pandemic left an indelible mark on communities across the world, and Monterey County was no exception. In our county alone, 940 of our neighbors lost their lives to the virus. Behind each of those numbers was a person, a parent, a grandparent,...

Well, hello! Did you miss me last week? Yeah, I know that you need my column so you can have something to put on the bottom of your birdcage. I could lie to you with some far-fetched excuse about why I missed the deadline, but...

The waiting is the worst. I don’t think there is anyone who would challenge me on that. I get flashbacks to my own cancer diagnosis from 10 years ago. One test slowly crawled to another and you are in the waiting room of your...

I usually awake on a Monday morning and see what is going on in my life. This morning I got bad news on my phone. One of my best friends’ mom died last night. She chose, if that’s possible, to die on the anniversary...

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...

Window on the World: Column by Lucy Jensen

Summer comes to an end tomorrow when the Fall Equinox descends upon us with equal amounts of day and night heralding the incremental journey toward shorter days and longer nights. I am not fond of that particular cosmic arrangement, in fact prefer the exact...

As the once-owner of Salinas Valley Ford Truck Center in Salinas, I find myself grappling with a profound sense of loss and frustration. For more than three decades, our family business provided excellent service to the local community and government agencies. Then, in the blink of...

When you have been traveling between England and America as many times as I have over the past few decades, you get a bit accustomed to the lag, as it were. Mostly it’s about a 10-hour flight with an eight-hour time difference, which can...