Last week 10 immigration reform activists brought their case to the Hanford home of U.S. Rep. David Valadao.
On the second to last day of vacation, I thought I saw a woman crossing the street with her left breast resting nonchalantly on the outside of her snow white blouse.
Reader: Sorry to see our Bakersfield paper go off the anti-Trump cliff with the other 300-plus lemming national papers this past Thursday ("Our View: Media here for the people," Aug. 15). If 10 of your friends call you a jerk, maybe you're a jerk. Likewise, if tens of millions of people call…
This one got to me. I was sitting at the table Thursday morning when the group text came from Sue: “RESPECT ❤️ 😢RIP Aretha.”
Exactly a week ago I asked readers to suggest what we might want to portray of ourselves to the rest of America.
All three chairs on the barbershop side of Reyna's Beauty Salon were occupied. Three young barbers cropped the necks of three young customers, and a fourth waited his turn. Everyone in this Lamont barbershop had a vote, I announced. "Pretend you're the school board. How does Lamont High Scho…
Reader: One only has to look at the front-page headlines in your Aug. 4 edition to know we've fallen full-bore into a feel-good generation. "Mini-Con brings out inner superheroes," "How not to recycle," and of world-shatteringly importance, "City seeks funds for proposed bike path along Fria…
Back in 1972 I had recently sold my tire store on the Garces circle and was in-between occupations. For years I had thought about giving shooting lessons across the country, so I decided this would be a good time to try.
My daughter and her fiancé have brought a message back from Sri Lanka, where they have been living and working: The trash problem is out-of-control. The litter of the world reaches faraway beaches, and chokes the oceans in between. My daughter describes waves of plastic refuse in the sea, so…
We may be our own worse enemies. We're certainly our own worst critics.
Who should be responsible when a public utility company’s equipment causes a wildfire: the investors who own that utility or California taxpayers, homeowners and ratepayers?
She was sitting alone on a lounge chair in the hotel pool area.
Listen to people discuss the City of Bakersfield's proposed sales tax increase and you're liable to hear complaints about employee pension obligations and other assorted government screwups and inefficiencies. If we're going to talk about taxes, that's all fair game for debate.
Reader: Bob Price's leftist view is obvious in his obsequious defense of Supervisor Leticia Perez's misdemeanor charge as an overreach by the DA ("Why is Perez's case different? Onus is on DA's office," July 25). His political leanings are at variance with any moral values his father, a chap…
The only thing to do on a hot summer day is see “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.” The movie is touching, funny, entertaining and no doubt a lot of fancy people won’t like it.
Grace Vallejo checked her phone as she stood up to leave for her next appointment.
“What are you going to do with that old stump in the driveway?” Sue asked.
By his own admission Robert Nevarez concedes he was not the best of students while in college. Unsure of what he wanted to do with his life, he dabbled in different majors but only succeeded in landing on academic probation. It wasn't until his Uncle Ray invited him to visit the San Jose Pol…
Congressman Kevin McCarthy leads a double life.
To reach Rosedale Remedies, the cannabis shop on Rosedale Highway, you have to drive by Budget Bolts, Pittsburgh Paint, All Star Glass, Majestic Palms, Gentle Dental, The Bulk Yard, Highland Church of Christ, Lucky Liquors and Hungry Howie’s Pizza. When you see Country Boy Drive-in, you’re close.
Reader: This is Don Hall of Don Hall Jewelers just calling to say, what an outstanding article by Steven Mayer on the return of the Japanese-American lieutenant colonel's medals ("Yard sale purchase yields trove of military medals," July 21). Steve really hit the nail on the head. I grew up …
Every now and then, or perhaps more frequently, we ponder the Big Questions. Is there such a thing as a benevolent creator? Do we live on after death? Does anyone’s life matter? Stuff like that. A Big Question can even tackle a smaller matter. For example, when a day passes that seems incons…
As a teenager growing up here in Bakersfield, I remember often reading numerous stories about bird hunting in South America.
My truck, you can kick. I don’t mean the tires either. You can kick the truck.
Fifth District Supervisor Leticia Perez, charged with criminal conflict of interest, joins a long list of local government officials, elected and appointed, who have been accused of breaching campaign laws, financial disclosure requirements or ethics standards over the years.
Depending when you are reading this, we will have either just started to head out on a Wavehog chartered deep sea fishing boat from Dana Point in Southern California, or already stopped at our first fishing spot with our poles in the deep Pacific Ocean waters, or headed back to our San Cleme…
“Is the newspaper really going to move?” several people have asked.
Well, this is unnecessary. And mighty curious.
Reader: Are you out of your minds to run this on the front page of the paper? And as the section-front headline ("Trump heads to Putin summit with no clear goal — and worries that he’ll make concessions," July 14).
I came home recently and there was a watermelon on our front porch. It was big, green and round.
“The fluorescent lights in the laundry room are burning out,” Sue said. “Do you think you can replace them?”
A jury will ultimately decide whether Kern County Supervisor Leticia Perez, married to a pot-industry lobbyist, inappropriately cast the lone vote against an ordinance to ban commercial cannabis sales last October.
His final set list started with “Smile.” Most people in the church were far from pulling that off but Dominick Pisano believed in the power of music to lift people’s spirits and he wasn’t going to waste an opportunity with a captive audience.
Last week CNBC released its annual ranking of America’s top states for business. I doubt I was the only one unsurprised to see California nowhere near the top.
I don't know about you, but I sometimes tire of hearing about so much bad stuff going on in Bakersfield, Kern County, the nation and the rest of the world. It can be downright depressing. That's why when a story comes along about something good, it's something you want to share.
One measure of a city's economic prowess, and thus its place in the American landscape, is its access by air to and from the world beyond its borders. By that measure, Bakersfield ranks somewhere between Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Bismarck, N.D. That is to say, just a few notches above irrelevance.
You want to take 16 people to Poland? All of whom who are related to you? Then you have to believe, have a plan or believe in your plan like Lucas and Anna Dobrzanski did.
Reader: Very nice write-up on Bakersfield's Lonnie Shelton ("Everyone wanted a piece of Lonnie Shelton, and he delivered," Robert Price, July 11). I have fond memories of Lonnie when we played together at South High School on the JV basketball team. I was the starting point guard, with margi…
About 10 to 12 years ago I was on the phone one evening with one of my old skeet shooting friends who lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Wimbledon is the one tournament a year when tennis looks fun. Doable. Something you might try even if the rest of the year you either don’t play tennis or think about tennis.
“Ou est la Bastille?" is a question that is asked by many an ill-informed visitor to Paris. In response, Parisians can only point out the square where the Bastille once stood, because little trace of the infamous state prison remains. History enthusiasts may want to stand in the Place de la …
It must be nice to be wanted the way Lonnie Shelton was wanted. Everybody needed something from the big-hearted, big-talented kid from Foothill High School, it seemed. And he obliged them as best he could, even if it meant double duty.
I ran into Jessica Pounds (owner of Moo Creamery) at the downtown July 4th parade. She talked about the column on the raw vegetable platters people serve at parties that everybody pretends to like, but no one really does.
Bakersfield’s a pass-through town. Talented people move here, stay for awhile and then leave. If we had feelings, they’d be hurt.
Reader: I read with interest the printing of the Declaration of Independence in your July 4 paper. At the bottom of the document that we Americans so cherish are the signatures of the 56 men who signed it. Men who were putting their own lives in peril by virtue of their signatures as they we…
I bought a pair of boat shoes. I don’t have a boat, but I have a pair of boat shoes.
I never considered that requiring elected legislators to approve taxes and fees devised by unelected bureaucrats to be an “abomination.”
I was at a party, recently. Sitting on the food table was the traditional raw vegetable platter that included baby carrots, broccoli florets, celery stalks chopped into bite-sized pieces, raw mushrooms and cauliflower. A tub of hummus sat in the middle of the vegetables.
I took my kids to the spray park at Beale Park in the Oleander neighborhood last week. Along with towels, sunscreen and folding chairs, I also brought my trash pickers and a trash bag. Sometimes while my kids are playing at the park, I pick up trash.
Music is not only in voices, notes and instruments. Sometimes music is in places. Places we have to visit in order to feel right again.
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