Opinion

It is 3 a.m., this column will run Feb. 1, one week from this morning. According to statistics from 2020, by that date 868 people in the United States will have died from gun violence. Now that you see where this is heading, you...

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...

“It must first be said that with increased residential and agricultural use and improved water management, flood concern is not what it was a few decades back.” Regarding the above statement, if I can be forgiven for using baseball metaphors at the height of football...

It all started about three weeks ago with a stiffening of the neck that while a minor bother for a few days to within a few hours the pain became severe enough that I could not swivel my head side-to-side more than a few...

Greetings and congratulations to those of you who have completed the prescribed course of academia and have now, or soon will be, granted a diploma from your respective Salinas Valley schools. As has been pointed out to you all, your graduation is an important...

What is going on with our weather? I buy a new jacket and then the sun comes out like the fires of you know where. I love the warm weather, but it has to follow the rules. This out of sync weather plays the...

When you are crawling toward 24 years of marriage and over 26 together, the fireworks are not always going off, unless the neighbor decides that the Fourth of July cannot come soon enough. You are mostly like two comfortable-ish chairs, grumbling about the thing...

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...

One late afternoon some years ago I stood among rows of uniformly sized brass markers placed with military precision in the grass at the Riverside National Cemetery. At my feet was my father’s marker, and this was my annual pilgrimage to his final resting...

In this column, let us venture into the sociological world of politics in the present age through the eyes of a former member of a cult. This particular cult, like most cults, was grounded in religion, in this case Christianity. This person would have claimed,...