Under the best of circumstances, tabulating the number, household size and ethnicity of 330 million people, spread across nearly 4 million square miles of prairie, desert, mountain and asphalt, is a formidable feat.

There’s something innately human in our need to create physical, lifelike representations of ourselves and our world. There’s something deep-seated and instinctive about our urge to fashion objects of commemoration or worship.

I would like to lodge a complaint about wearing face masks.

Like virtually all societies throughout human history, we Americans have always romanticized our wars. The more significant the war, the more vivid the romance. We build legends and traditions around the wars and paint the combatants in boldly contrasting colors of good and evil.

When Dolores Huerta Foundation executives brought their plans for a $20 million downtown cultural center and organizational headquarters to city officials last year, they were met with great enthusiasm.

It had a special symmetry. 2020. The configuration conveyed order and balance, almost a harmony of sorts. Twenty on your side of the ledger, twenty on mine. In a society that bats around phrases like equal justice — never mind what the reality might always have been — its rhythm felt like a …

It was a clear, perfect day at the perfect man-made oval known as Pinewood Lake. Hazel-gray ducks cut across the water in threes and a daring squirrel darted straight up the trunk of the substantial cottonwood at water’s edge. Jacquie Sullivan served apple juice on the back patio in tall, sl…

There’s a homemade sign planted along Stockdale Highway a short distance from my house that makes what seems like a patriotic declaration: “Stop the Tyranny,” it shouts. “Open California Now.” A small U.S. flag attached to the top certifies the sign-maker’s credentials.

Fuzzy Owen had breakfast at Spencer’s Cafe, in East Hills, every morning. Every. Morning.

We’re not clear of this pandemic, not even close, no matter how much we might want to be, but we are starting to get a picture of what it might look like when we get there.

I used to feel occasional twinges of regret about the relentless pace of my life. Only a month ago, it seemed so hard to slow down. There was always something important to do. Always a deadline. Someone was always counting on me to fulfill some obligation, complete some task.

Two weeks into my new full-time gig, I can report that life at a television station, in and of itself, does not make one better looking or more well-spoken. It does, at least, encourage the expansion and refinement of one’s wardrobe, which in my case was a dire need.

The hallway intersection outside the fourth-floor administrative offices of the Dolores Huerta Foundation was congested with foot traffic.

The Dolores Huerta Foundation is undertaking a $20 million fundraising effort to build a community cultural center near 21st and H streets downtown on property owned by the Self-Help Credit Union. A San Diego architectural firm is designing plans, and fundraising efforts have begun.

Reader: I have always thought that Bob Price's 1997 article comparing the Hale-Bopp comet to local resident Hal Bopp — wait a minute, that's me! — was his finest work ("The Big Boppers: Hale-Bopp, the comet, has startling similarities to Hal Bopp, the oil guy," April 3, 1997). But columnist …

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote in all U.S. elections. Women had already been eligible to vote for nine years in California: In 1911, 50 of the state's 58 counties, Kern among them, voted in support of the state constitutional amend…

I have three tidy little rows of media apps on my phone that I check periodically, some more often than others. I have too many, I know: The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Athletic, three local television stations, a loca…

Reader: All I want to say is "thank you so much" for putting one foot in front of the other and taking a very big step toward solving the homeless problem ("Take this tour of the county's new homeless shelter," Feb. 12). Good grief! All these years have passed, and yet all it takes is one go…

There's a mini-city under construction on M Street at 29th, and it looks like a promising blueprint for the care, feeding and management of a population that, increasingly, has been on our collective minds: The homeless.

Over the past year I've taken you along the streets, through the parks, and down the alleys of some of Bakersfield's most historic and unique neighborhoods, and I could keep going for another 10. But what about the neighborhoods of the coming decades? Where, physically, is Bakersfield headed…

Reader: I was deeply saddened to learn about Larry Press, The Californian's longtime sports editor and sports columnist, who died this week ("Longtime sports editor Larry Press dies at 93," Feb. 7). Two events in my memory stand out, among the many, that define Larry Press: 

My house was so cold Monday night I overruled my own cheapskate tendencies and turned up the thermostat.

One of the first important tasks Bakersfield's new, incoming city manager must undertake will be the hiring of a new police chief. Christian Clegg, who starts March 2, will pick from a field of three finalists forwarded from the city's police commission. The new chief will be a known commodi…

Reader: Robert Price's Jan. 26 column, "Unplugged, ejected and exiled, now-candidate Solis has fellow Dems exhausted and wary," which somehow merited front page placement, was "opinionated grease" into the swamp of thinly veiled bias and prejudicial politics. Let's acknowledge that The Calif…

Bakersfield won't select a police chief to replace Lyle Martin until the newly hired city manager, Christian Clegg, finishes up his business in Stockton, makes his way south and settles in a little. By late March the city's police commission should have whittled the candidates down to a mana…

Periodically over the years, Kern County Democrats have enjoyed spectacles of discord among Kern County Republicans. And Kern County Republicans have enjoyed spectacles of discord among Kern County Democrats. 

Reader: Read your column in Friday's paper ("Another study, another statistical cellar," Jan. 25); thoroughly enjoyed it.  

The Central Valley had Sacramento’s attention in two noteworthy ways last week.

Reader: Thank you very much for spotlighting — and correcting — state Sen. Shannon Grove's absurd Facebook post about a book supposedly part of California's sex education curriculum for sixth-graders ("How do you like your sex, kids? And other fake news," Jan. 15). I guess I should not be su…

Little Suzy won't be learning about kinky sex after all. Not in her sixth-grade class, anyway. On the playground, maybe, but not from Mrs. McGillicuddy.

It was her first day as a server and Scarlett Sabin was trying to be meticulous. "Cheeseburger, no onions, light sauce," she would write in her little order pad, spelling out every letter in lilting script. The cook, accustomed to "CB w tom" and similar lunch-counter abbreviations, motioned …

Reader: Regarding the tendency of theater-goers to occupy seats set aside for disabled customers and their companions ("These movie seats are reserved — until they're not," Jan. 8): What do you expect when drivers who are not handicapped park in handicap spaces and are never ticketed? — I've…

It was Romi's last night in town before he returned to school for the spring semester and the Lara family wanted to do something together. Apparently the Laras have no aversion to sequels because they agreed on the latest installment of The Rock's action franchise, "Jumanji: The Next Level."…