Opinion

It has been a most interesting year; what an understatement. I have never felt so fortunate and yet so frustrated. I’ve found skills this year I didn’t think I had. I have dug deep for patience I never believed I possessed. Four years ago,...

There is no doubt, when you look around the room of trainers and trainees that this is a perfectly symbiotic relationship of the incarcerated in society, with little hope and aspiration in life, training the unwanted pups, which were rescued from death row. On...

It has been two years since my baby sister Rosie passed on to another planet. When some say that spirits fly close to the ground, I have found that to be true, also that they don’t fly in the conventional sense. Sister seems to...

There is something about eye contact that lets two people know that for just a split second, just a flicker of time, there has been a meeting of minds, a very brief acknowledgment of each other’s existence. I had just such an encounter last...

Whatever you may think about having a day dedicated to our thankfulness, you have to admit that California, with all the problems we all face this year, will have plenty of places to say “thank you” for the huge number of volunteers that want...

To the Editor: The Oct. 7 mass slaughter of 1,100 Israeli civilians by 3,000 Hamas gunmen in Israel shocked part of the civilized world. Even more macabre was the kidnapping and rape of 300 other Israeli civilians.  Most Americans recognize Israel’s right for self-defense. And also,...

The first time we met she was the secretary of the organization but seemed to be pretty much in charge of everything. She was curious about which rock I had just crawled out from under and where my people were from. Her enthusiasm for...

The other day I had invited one of my best friends to come down from Oregon to have lunch and just catch up. Gordon has a son that lives off the grid up in Oregon, and so he spends a lot of time up...

Local column by Joanne Banuelos

I recall so clearly the simplicity of the holidays when we were young. We would show up and be fed and presented with presents, as it were. (Occasionally I would help Mum with the wrapping, but that was about the extent of my responsibilities.)...