Dampen the Insanity

With the fall semester drawing near and higher levels of education correlating with higher median weekly earnings, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2019’s Most & Least Educated Cities in America as well as accompanying videos. To determine where the most educated Americans are choosing to settle, WalletHub compared the 150 largest […]

Careless and Unaware

The peace of our idyllic new neighborhood is pierced, quite literally–and often–by the shrieking of an impossibly shrill little girl. Closing the windows is no defense. Only when I’m in the shower is she drowned out. Which gives me an idea–an awful idea…a wonderful, awful idea–as I can’t help but hear her enjoying their swimming […]

Blink of an Eye

It’s hard to believe the Fourth of July is already upon us. If I knew where the first half of the year went I’d bottle the knowledge and become wealthy selling it. Twenty years ago this month we moved to Tulare County. It’s gone by in the blink of an eye. The Chief was raised […]

Rocinante

I’ve just finished local author Mark Arax’ latest tome, The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California. It’s a tremendous achievement–the writing ,research and living of it–certainly not my having read it. A must-read for any understanding of the Golden State, Arax expertly chronicles our many gold-type rushes–particularly that of water. We’re all Don […]

An Unusual Luxury

No alarm sounds unless–heaven forfend–I have to appear in court by 8:30 in the morning. Customarily, however, I am off that particular hook myself, and rarely is there a case for the paper to cover. So we routinely awake, without rising, and drowse for an hour or more. Every day. It’s an unusual luxury. “Shall […]

Tulare is Copenhagen

  Tulare City Councilman Greg Nunley should be positively crimson with shame after suing the city for $16.5 million. But he’s not. This is a breach of Nunley’s fiduciary duty not to Tulare itself, but to its taxpaying residents–especially those in the area he represents, District 5. What’s particularly galling is that this suit represents […]

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

So Trump asks Russia to find and hack Hillary Clinton’s emails–and Russia does so. Russian operatives offer “dirt” on Hillary Clinton at a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting–and Donald Trump Jr. “loves it.” The president’s first national security advisor, General Mike Flynn, is convicted of lying to congress about his contacts with Russian oligarchs and […]

Not in the Manual

Typically, when you’re in your teenage years and you endure your first break-up–especially if you’re the one who’s been jettisoned–it’s injurious to your entire being. It’s sufficient, and still real enough, to make you overuse variations of the word “you” just remembering it years later. A first break-up, especially for the eighty-sixed, is systemically catastrophic […]