Opinion

I had a breakthrough yesterday — and I don’t mean metaphorically. Wars rage, countless humans suffer, the rich get richer, life goes on. I still have my morning coffee. But not yesterday. What happened — about 5 a.m. — was a fleeting insight into life beyond its small certainties and routines. When life suddenly spins out of control, the Great Unknown is momentarily present. I have decided to write about it, or try to write about it, to honor the vulnerable everywhere. That hour of the morning is not my normal get-up time, but as I enter geezerhood (I turned 75 half a year ago) I find myself waking up throughout the night and heading with sudden urgency to t...

The older people in our nursing homes have a problem. The state puts people on Medicaid and promises them services, and then doesn’t pay those who provide these services at a rate that is commensurate to the actual costs. Seventy five percent of those in our nursing home are on Medicaid and down to the...

Editor,  I am honored to publicly support Don Bell’s reelection campaign for Sheriff of Lake County. Having known and worked with Don for more than thirty years, I can state without hesitation that he is exactly the person Lake County needs for Sheriff. During my thirty-five years in law enf...

Editor, “Many hands make light work” rings true for the creation and deliverance of “The Awakening” Mission Valley Choral Society concerts held on Palm Sunday weekend. No more than four specific names can be used here, so a general thank you follows. Thank you to Mission Valley ...

Salty snacks? Sweet snacks? What’s your choice? I tend to gravitate towards salty. I am not alone in this preference as evidenced by the 36.89 billion-dollar-a-year savory snack industry in the US. Chief among these snacks is the humble potato chip. Scanning through any supermarket, among the plethora ...

Last weekend I dove headfirst down a deep rabbit hole. And, as those of us with rabbit hole experience can attest, once you hop in there is no going back. It started innocently enough, as most rabbit hole ventures do. I recently got a haircut and have decided to embrace my naturally wavy/curly, albeit fin...

Amid all the negativity we are reading in the news these days, take-a-break with these: A guy walks into a lumber yard and asks for some two-by-fours. The clerk asks, “How long do you need them?” The man answers, “A long time. We’re gonna build a house.” The students walk ...

We expect a great deal from our Supreme Court - that justices apply the law rigorously, but with a broad understanding of what their decisions mean to individuals and society. It is the need for this broad, wise understanding that makes diversity on the bench so important. None of us, however intelligent and...

Spring is often about the renewal of life. This “spring feeling” is even more robust as the cases of COVID-19 receded, and our lives around Lake County are moving back to their regular pace. Still, as physicians, we cannot forget what we have gone through over the last two years. We have taken ca...

A friend of mine recently lost his grandmother and came to inherit her fancy copper pots and pans. Beautiful, gleaming cookware … once he had cleaned the dust from them, as they’d hung up in her kitchen like a chandelier, unused, since the day they’d been purchased. He shared that his g...