Opinion

If you have read any of my scribbling over time, you know I’m a lifelong conservative. I don’t know exactly when I discovered this. Although I can’t remember much about politics until my platoon sergeant and I were sitting on the hood of a...

I was attending a baseball game on the Greenfield Elementary School grounds when a car pulled up next to the entrance gate on 10th Street. It was a black four-door Ford, just like the ones the FBI drove on television, with two men in...

It was almost exactly one o’clock in the afternoon on the first day of April when the window blinds in the studio began to move and that was the first indication that the Valley winds have once again arrived for their annual blow. It...

On the occasion of my sister’s 50th birthday — were she still alive — I was up in San Francisco with my friend. I really struggled with the fact that sister should be celebrating her big milestone birthday with the world who loved her,...

Believing nursing to be her divine purpose, a young British woman set out to reform healthcare in the 1800s — influencing the quality of care we take for granted in modern times. Florence Nightingale changed nursing forever during the Crimean War in 1854, leading a...

Thirty-three years. I started to just put the numbers on the page, but no matter whether you spell it out or use the numbers, it is a long time. Or, we could be more specific, a long time to be married. Fortunately, I happen...

It was supposed to be just a distant memory by now; an inconvenient blink in the eye of all our busy lives and exciting plans. I think we imagined that, once the vaccine was available, people would be scurrying to get it, racing in...

The definition of the word “volunteer,” according to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, is a person who does a job without being paid for it. That’s pretty straightforward, but in my opinion it falls a bit short of the mark; if one takes the...

Boy oh boy! How many times did I say that as a youth? I was third of four boys. It seemed that my Dad always favored the older two boys in almost every area as a youth. My oldest brother would get a new...

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to...