Opinion

How do you kickstart a quality healthcare system in a small agricultural town during one of the worst economic slumps in American history? Philanthropy and volunteerism, that’s how. King City opened the area’s first full-fledged hospital in 1941, with 22 beds in a single-story building...

I don’t know the extremes to which one can go to be called a pacifist, so I don’t label myself one but do join the majority that eschews violence. I don’t like witnessing people fighting in anger, and I’m sure I’m not alone in...

Some years back, not so very many, I was prepared to say that I had done all the traveling my pocketbook would allow and I was content with that until in October of last year an opportunity arose, to wit: money. I had set...

Believe it or not, it’s time once again to talk about influenza. The typical flu season in the United States begins after Labor Day, and can extend into the early spring of the following year. Our best defense has always been, and continues to...

October is a funny old month. Some days are hot as summer, yet with stilled winds in the afternoons and an icy bite to the early mornings and evenings. November can be more of the same, yet the time of year is marked by...

For today’s column I cite Joe Mathews as main source. Joe writes the California Connected column for Arizona State University’s publication Zocalo Public Square (which is redundant as a zocalo is a public square, but I digress). Instead of taking a dramatic approach where I...

It sure is cold enough for me. This morning I had to get up early to go to a dentist appointment over in Monterey. When the old alarm clock said, “It’s time to get up,” I just pulled the covers up and said to...

Every fine time is far more enjoyable if first one experiences some minor hardships along the way. As I write I am sitting on a second-floor balcony at the Hotel Lake Maggiori in Locarno, Ticino, Switzerland. It is 10 minutes after four in the...

This is my last Funny Papers Again column for the Valley newspapers, so if you have been a fan over the past couple of years then, well, just read slowly, I guess. More on this at the end of this column. Last Wednesday was the...