Since buying the TC in 2013, Jack and I have little time to travel — unlike after he retired in 2010. We dream and talk about doing so again, and, hopefully, we’ll get that chance soon. In the meantime, we take mini-vacations, particularly when serving on the California News Publishers Association board and/or Government Affairs…
I wrote this piece 10 years ago this week and it evokes wonderful memories of the desert stories of these authors and my experiences there: Edward Abbey and Edna Price both possessed a deep appreciation for the desert. These two authors visualized and described deserts as natural paradises. To me, the word desert epitomized a…
In the past few months, each of the four special fire districts on the Hill — Idyllwild Fire, and Fern Valley, Idyllwild and Pine Cove waters — saw one of their board members resign, all for health reasons. The first to resign was Charlie Wix in February 2017. Through a bumbling process where another director…
I took my grandson Carter with me to Sacramento last week for the annual California News Publishers Association’s Government Affairs Day. While he stayed in the hotel room, I attended the day of speakers from both the Assembly and the House, as well Delaine Eastin, a candidate for governor. She was the only gubernatorial candidate…
I lied. Well, I didn’t actually lie because I fully intended to deliver that talk at the Idyllwild Rotary Club Wednesday, as I mentioned in last week’s column summarizing some of the talk, but as Tuesday progressed, so did some bug who decided to take control of my respiratory system. By the next morning, a…
This is an excerpt of a speech I’m giving at the Rotary Club Wednesday morning, as the papers get delivered. Pete Seeger said, “After visits to several Communist countries (USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, East Germany, Vietnam, China, Cuba), I feel strongly that most ‘revolutionary’ types around the world don’t realize the importance of freedom of…
My New Year’s resolution for 2018 is to get healthier. Not that I’m ill, but just that I’m not as active as I could be and have a few pounds to shed. I’m not writing this to encourage anyone to do what I did because that’s something you and your doctor should discuss. This is…
For more than a decade John Hawkins has served Riverside County as our fire chief. He has done so with leadership, diplomacy, intelligence, respect for the office, and not least of all, humility. He set an example to other personnel. Though his jurisdiction covers the fourth most populous county in the state and the 11th…
Other than the occasional wandering bear, lake-stocked fish and migrated bald eagle, our wildlife population primarily derives from their own local ancestry — generations and generations preceeding from time before maybe even the American Indians settled here. That’s not the case with the human population. Even most of the Native Americans, other than on nearby…
I have to admire one local board member who, following my criticism of his board’s actions in last week’s column, actually came into my office open-minded to learn what he could to better understand the Brown Act concerns I pointed out. Rarely, in all these years of writing about open government laws — both the…
