Insights and Opinions

By Steve Tietjen, Ed.D. & Salvador Sandoval, MD It has been more than a year since the COVID-19 health crisis disrupted our lives. While most schools are back in session, we have a long way to go before we can get back to a more normal school day. Our local school boards, teachers, administrators and support staff have all worked…

Paradise, California is like a moonscape. It has been more than two and half years since the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s…

With 41 percent of the normal rainfall in most areas of California, what are we looking at this fire season? The same as the past, only worse. There…

EDITOR’S NOTE: Publisher John Derby drove more than 4,000 miles in less than a week to be with his sister for her 88 birthday and present in Illinois for the birth of his first great grandson. He arrived in time for both, which is how he happened to be in Lincoln country. There is something hallowed about the ground on which Abraham Lincoln…

We are in the GREEN tier! That means we can toss the masks, go buy gas for less than $2 per gallon and head for Fresno for a flight to London! … Not.…

I'm working on my 18th trip to Kenya in December. On my second trip to Kenya, I saw a Maasai elder with a deep scar across his chest. I asked my friend,…

By Juan Sánchez Muñoz Fifty-five years ago this week, a major movement in U.S. civil rights history spent the night in Merced on its march from Delano to Sacramento to fight for the basic dignity of California farm workers. Cesar Chavez, leading what would become the United Farm Workers, spent his adult life marching, protesting,…

By Mike Biddison The official beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere this year came and went on Saturday, March 20th. The day passed hardly noticed…

They said it was a crazy idea, and they were probably correct. How could anyone drive from Bahia Conception, three quarters the way down the Baja…

If money were no object, what car would you like to have? I posed this question to a number of old car fanciers and their responses ran the gamut from being satisfied with what they have to wanting exotic sports cars that only "unobtainium" could buy. In a number of cases, folks wished they could get their first car or truck…