Robert Price
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Yikes! Now I really need that vacation
As you read this, I am gripping a kayak paddle or a can of beer or some other implement of summer idleness. At least I hope I am, because getting myself into position to vacate the premises for cooler, greener climes about killed me.
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Tail of Prague dog and other summer detours
I might have told the story of the time, years ago, that the wife and I were so poor we decided to forego our monthly trip to the salon and instead cut each other's hair with sewing scissors. I proved to be a pretty bad hair stylist, but she was worse, and by the time we were finished we looked like we'd been in a tragic lawnmower accident. The girls down at Supercuts got a good laugh out of it, and even though we really could have used the $24, we laughed too.
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I'll shed no tears for fate of Joe Camel
The president and I have a few things in common: a vastly underappreciated game of basketball (long abandoned, in my case), a wife who looks capable of winning arm-wrestling matches (and has, in my wife's case -- just not, ahem, against me), and a history with tobacco we'd both like to forget.
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Scoreboard check not encouraging
The budget crisis that threatens so much of what we've come to take for granted as Californians has swooped into the gymnasium. The Kern High School District, largest in the state among grade 9-12 districts, will axe a big chunk of its athletic programs, a move expected to save $430,000 of the $3.7 million that still must be cut from the 2009-2010 budget.
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A lesson this scholar didn't sign up for
On the 11th day of Peter Hayes' comprehensive, borderline-grueling 12-day seminar for university faculty, "Teaching the Holocaust," the topic was to have been Holocaust denial.
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Severing the link that gave us Dr. Chavez
Rocky Chavez comes home next month, hopefully for good. He'll take up residency at Kern Medical Center, starting a new life in the very place where he first glimpsed this world 26 years ago.
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Modest dream sure feels big to these grads
The principal gave Luis Castro a nickname his first week at school: Smiley. And not because Castro was full of good cheer. It was pure sarcasm: Castro, a tatted-up gang-banger from south Bakersfield, looked like he'd rather wring necks than hug them.
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Another way to get ahead this summer
If this isn't the worst possible annoyance for parents with high school teens, it has to be up there, alongside late-night chauffeuring duties and outgrown-overnight blue jeans.
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Just another day at office for KMC staff
We don't know why it was necessary for an entire family to suffer the consequences of a dispute that almost surely did not involve them all. We know only that, in a south Bakersfield home, in the small hours of Thursday morning, one or more people tried to commit mass murder. And they very nearly succeeded.
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We'll survive: 'Forwarders' count on us
It's undeniable: Newspapers as we know them are changing, evolving -- and in a few disheartening cases, disappearing. That empowering, comforting and occasionally aggravating bundle of processed wood pulp that lands on American driveways every morning continues to shrink, day by day -- and not just in our little corner of the world.
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Juror left to ponder fallout of reversals
If it seems like everyone associated with the Bakersfield child molestation convictions of the 1980s is now officially a casualty of justice gone awry, that's because, in one sense or another, they are.
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It's not all about the bottom line
It doesn't quite rise to the level of oxymoron -- think "military intelligence" -- but the concept of business ethics has taken on new dimensions over the past year.
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McCarthy is working hard for the team
The most useful attribute a college football coach can possess, aside from familiarity with the grammar of the game and a commanding game-day presence on the sideline, is the ability to convince young, agile behemoths to enroll at his university.
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Don't cut this from schools' curriculum
Blue is for the expanse of sky on the western horizon that hints of adventures not yet imagined. Green is for the rolling hills of early spring so abundant with hidden life. Purple-grey is for the sea, so powerful and mysterious in its opaque vastness.
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Yes, 10 kids can make one school district
It's been a tough year for everything associated with state funding, from road construction projects to programs for homebound seniors. At the top of that list, of course, is public education, which is taking an $11 billion hit.
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Robert Price: If it sounds fishy, rest assured it is
Craig Garrett has returned from his harrowing African ordeal looking remarkably healthy and untroubled. If he has your e-mail in the address book of his Hotmail account, you may have already been apprised of the frightening details. But here, for others' benefit, is the story:
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If it sounds fishy, rest assured it is
Craig Garrett has returned from his harrowing African ordeal looking remarkably healthy and untroubled. If he has your e-mail in the address book of his hotmail account, you may have already been apprised of the frightening details. But here, for others' benefit, is the story:
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Some hope for former foster youth
Damien Salmon had been an adult, legally speaking, for only a matter of days when he came to another one of those "what now?" moments he'd been experiencing in increasing number.
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Robert Price: Car dealers get what FDR meant
The cars are there. The buyers are there. And, Lord knows, the sellers are there.
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Robert Price: Advice for would-be politicians
I don't think Schwinn Green is his real name, so you'll probably never see any of his short, odd letters published in this newspaper. Same goes for his brother Huffy.
