Opinion

It has been a long time since we had a pig in the family. You read that correctly. Back in 2011, when my daughter was young, she raised an award-winning pig for the Salinas Valley Fair through the high school 4-H Club. For rookies...

During the course of my Senate campaign, I did my best to visit communities throughout this big, beautiful state and get to know the people who have brought such drive, talent, ingenuity, and perseverance to every field of endeavor. I made a particular point...

By my reckoning 140 years, give or take, of my family’s timeline was spent in prisons; the years accumulated by my parents, a brother and his wife, a niece and myself. And it seems the family occupation within the California Department of Corrections (CDC;...

My baby girl is getting married this weekend and I just can’t believe it. Eight months or so of furious planning and here we are. Your mind flashes back to the first time you laid eyes on her in this world, that sweet, cooing...

I uttered those words last Thursday evening from an outdoor stage during an event that, for me, is THE event of the year: The King City Community Scholarship Foundation Inc. Drive-In Banquet. Unlike fundraiser events where the goal is to enlarge the coffers of...

Is it over yet? Can we come out of hiding? You would think that the winners and losers are not put into the same sentence. However, this election seems to have been going on since the last one. I’m not very old, so I...

I have often thought about the people whose names appear regularly in our Valley papers and how I too often take their contributions as just matter of fact and miss the nuances. In last week’s edition, there appeared two photographs of rodeo competitors taken...

This week’s scribbling is dedicated to Commander Roger Baez, who was just finishing up two years as commander of Gonzales Post 81 of the American Legion. He was a lot more than that though. He worked every day to increase membership, enhance the Post...

I couldn’t think what to do with myself. My baby girl was lying in a hospital bed with a broken back when she should have been enjoying the vacation of a lifetime in Montana. She was heavily drugged and monitored. She slept a lot...

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