Opinion

I’m a brat. There, I said it. I think my mother was the last person who said it to me many years ago and she wasn’t wrong. I have lived and traveled freely all my life. I have cruised back and forth at will...

I don’t know what happened. We skipped through Halloween, enjoyed a nice, peaceful Thanksgiving and then all heck broke loose. I took an early Christmas delivery to my dad and sister overseas — and how organized was I! Even had the holiday gift bags...

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...

I have set aside my regular column this week, a little story about me and my dog in Arroyo Seco, nicely told in my humble opinion, but still just a little story; it will wait for another time. What prompted the change was my...

I would like to tell you that we can come out of hiding from the virus. I’d like to tell you that we can walk around without a mask; that we can fling open the doors and play with our kids, come out of...

To the Editor: Last week I wrote a guest column on the Western Flyer, the legendary boat that took John Steinbeck and Doc Ricketts to the sea of Cortez in 1940. A reader pointed out it wasn’t all about community, that Carol Steinbeck helped a great...

(Part III will finish up this story of the early days of grape growing in King City. We continue with the drive hauling grape rootings from Coalinga to King City over State Route 198.) About two miles westward out of Coalinga there begins an incline...

You know what I don’t like, let me tell ya what I don’t like. I don’t like all these little shortcuts that have infested the King’s English in past few years. I have had to be aware of how to use words as I...

Editor's Note: We welcome Letters to the Editor of local and general interest to our readers. Letters should be typed and include the writer’s first and last name, home address and phone number for verification. No anonymous letters will be printed. Letters may be edited...

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.” I don’t recall whose words those are, if I...