Opinion

The obvious symbol for the month of February is, of course, the heart. This ideograph — represented by an anatomically inaccurate shape, by the way — appears on greeting cards, love letters and ever-popular, emoji-filled texts. Yes, February is all about love, especially romantic love,...

If you are a shopper of any kind, chances are you probably stash plastic bags under the sink or keep them nicely folded around the house for future use. But as convenient as they are, lightweight, single-use plastic bags represent an environmental concern. In King...

Downtown Soledad on a Saturday can be a bustling little place. People’s comings and goings to the hardware store, the barber or the pharmacy. Getting an ice cream or some Mexican food for the family. Normal life is slowly returning. I had a mission...

The plane from the Isle of Man to London was only up in the air long enough to take a look at the clouds, and then it was back down again. We landed at London City airport in a timely fashion, hooked a cab...

Brain health is a critical piece of our overall health. Our amazing (and still mysterious) brain underlies our ability to communicate, make decisions, problem-solve and live a productive and useful life. At Mee Memorial Healthcare System, we will observe the 10th annual World Brain Day...

Boo. You may think it odd to start a column with a single word, but my curiosity led to research that informs us "boo" is one of the most uttered words in the American lexicon, used both to scare others and show displeasure. The...

I knew she had been unwell for some time. When I say “sometime,” I mean years. It was quite shocking when I saw her the last time. The liver disease was really taking its toll on her, and she told me that she was...

They said it would all be gone by now; it would have just been blown away like an errant feather — a dark memory from the archives of 2020. The last Christmas holidays, that should have been spent in my hometown on the English...

It is an uncommon occurrence in my own life to find myself in a situation where I become distinctly and acutely aware that I am—in that moment—a minority. This once occurred when I attended a young adult LGBTQ organization in Long Beach, where black...

Did you find something different in your mailbox this past weekend? By different I mean something that wasn’t there. By something that wasn’t there, I mean my weekly scribbling. I have to tell you that it was all my fault.  You see, like all newspapers,...