Opinion

Dear Salinas Valley Fair Livestock Auction Buyers; Let me take a few lines to tell you about a young man named Kevin and his pig named Malcolm. I have lived next door to Kevin’s family for about a decade now and have always found them...

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...

During the last several months of Covid — or the ongoing lifetime of this pandemic, depending on how you feel about it — people and dogs seem to have become even closer. Record adoption levels at shelters were noted the world over. People needed...

In elementary and high school, we used Mr. or Mrs. or Miss or Ms. or Coach, or in some cases Sister or Brother or Father, when addressing teachers; I suspect in most schools at that level it is still the case. Last summer I...

And so another week goes by. Are we getting close to our family members? Have the younger kids no longer wonder why Daddy is still at home? This is really getting old. One day we are “Sheltering in Place,” and the next minute we’re...

I was going to finish my traveler tales this week — my account of when we went to pay homage to the Queen of England and then what we did after that — but I got distracted. No, I felt the need to paint...

Have you ever been shot? Kind of a crazy question at the beginning, but I have a reason that I’ll tell you about. First, I want to tell you how I got into a situation that ended with a shot. I have told you...

Aren’t emotions the weirdest things? They can make you feel so good or bad depending on the situation. If you read my scribbling last week, you might remember that my two sons were going to take me out for a night on the town...

Considered the father of modern medicine, ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (known for his “first do no harm” ethical code called the Hippocratic Oath) still influences our practices more than 25 centuries after his time. The first to regard disease as a natural, not supernatural, phenomenon,...

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...