During times such as these you realize which people you’d want in the proverbial foxhole with you. They make themselves plain by their behavior, by how they confront crisis, and it’s easy to recognize one as an asset and another as a liability. But, during times such as these, we–each of us–have to be an […]

About this time two years ago we were in Azerbaijan with our old college friend Alison. While this is remarkable in its own right–hell, the very idea of a vacation is remarkable right now–what sticks out in my mind is an epic walk Alison and I took one day. She wanted to revisit some of […]

The above, I believe, can be credited to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at University of Washington. What I would like you to take notice of is California’s curve on this graph. That’s us, at the very bottom. Which means we’re at the top of our game when it comes to social distancing […]

Our youngest son called me last week to let us know, he said, that he is alright. “Of course,” I said. “I know you are.” He was not grasping the epidemiological aspects of the new coronavirus pandemic. “Listen,” I said. “You and I can probably drink a glass of this stuff and, according to the […]

After seven years of flying the Valley Voice you would think I’d be inured to carelessness by now. I wish I were, yet it sometimes still gets under my skin. Like when people characterize the entire newspaper based on a single press release. As if we had authored, or even endorsed it. Like when people […]

I don’t have an editor or owner hanging overhead. I wear both hats; so this column I write twice monthly is mine alone–successful or otherwise. Sometimes, I’m stumped. No idea what to write about. Mostly I just cock an ear toward the Universe and listen. To be honest, that’s what I’ve always done. And I […]

Major League Baseball’s most egregious off-season kerfuffle has involved the alleged “stealing” of signs. I have news for those who think this actually is scandalous: it’s why they’re called signs–nobody is going to blurt out their intentions beforehand; and they’re not stolen, they’re deciphered. Interpreted. This cat-and-mouse game-within-a-game has been going on in many sports […]

I’d been anticipating this moment for 33 years but did not expect that, when it finally arrived, I would feel only fear. Initially, there was elation. Out of a clear blue sky dropped university admission for the Kid, our fifth and youngest. Math, long her bete noire, had long seemed an insurmountable obstacle. But now, […]

Hindsight, famously, is 20-20; the future, a vision for 2020, say, is by nature hazy. All I know at this juncture is that I’m the only person in the family to have fallen both up the top step of the stairs and down the bottom one. Face plant, about four in the afternoon, onto the […]