Are you more likely to vote if everyone knows? We live in an increasingly public and transparent world. We are more likely to comply when people are watching.
My grandmother accepted the flag of a fallen son while held captive because of her face. A Gold Star mother loses her No. 1 son and spends the rest of her life bewildered because America is where they take freedom away from you. Yet despite the racism, my family returned to California and this valley, worked hard in the fields and struggled to re-establish their identity as Americans.
My wife celebrated a special birthday this year, so I searched for the best birthday wish I could find. I hoped to avoid the typical clichés and in the process discovered that extending appropriate birthday wishes can be a challenge.
A teacher may not have been the most charismatic or organized. They may have disciplined and pushed you at a time when you did not appreciate it. It’s not too late: You can write that letter now
My neighbors in the Valley may complain about government, but until they vote, they will not be heard. Latinos, until they vote, may remain hidden and invisible. Both groups are disenfranchised, lost and underrepresented.
Smaller newspapers are barely hanging on, budgets to pay for reporters and local coverage are declining. Worse yet, we probably don’t know what we’re missing.
All families undergo transition. Our daughter is taking over the farm. We are writing a book about succession and family. I age, she matures. Change is all about growing up.
People claim to know the face of the enemy. Some wrongly believe we are under attack by Islamic State terrorists everywhere. They have infiltrated all of our communities. They might be our neighbors. The proper course of action, they contend, is to flush them out and identify them by the faces they wear.
I had the great opportunity to attend the ceremony awarding the National Medal of Arts and Humanities in September at the White House. This is the highest honor bestowed on artists, scholars and writers who have labored a lifetime to create seminal works that impacted a nation and world. These were the best of the best in their fields.
I didn’t grow up surrounded by the arts – or so I thought. My family didn’t go to concerts or museums. We had a cheap landscape-painting reproduction hanging in our living room, and as a kid, I stared at it for hours yet found nothing. But we did farm, and I knew the colors of nature, understood taste and the flavor of peaches. I listened to pop music and danced with “American Bandstand.” I loved the sleek lines of 1950s cars (remember tail fins?).
While growing up, I wasn’t the brightest student and had some language and speech issues (for example, I thought the letters R and W were the same and could be used interchangeably). In school, my parents encouraged me to toil. They supported me yet never helped with homework and certainly not with class projects. Education was about hard work, exertion and trials. If I didn’t understand something, they quietly reassured me that struggle was good.
We have always had a farm dog. The first dog I can remember was appropriately named Dusty. Pat her short fur and a cloud of sandy loam dust always puffed into the air. I didn’t know her breed, farmers often did not pay attention to pedigree. We wanted a creature who barked at strangers, was kind to kids, and liked being outdoors.
What do you say to a graduate? What to write in a graduation card? What are you really thinking during a graduation ceremony? Here are a few thoughts, gleaned from others and things I’ve heard over the years.
A behind-the-scenes look at how Bee graphic artist SW Parra created the illustration that was published with David Mas Masumoto's May 24 column about graduation.
Summerset Village Apartments in Fresno made news in late 2015 when its 1,000 residents were left without hot water or heat. It took several weeks to get the apartments operational; the city fined owner Chris Henry $290,000 over the incident. Henry is appealing those fines. The case was being heard Monday, Sept. 26, 2016, at City Hall.
John WalkerThe Fresno Bee
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Summerset Village's first-day hearing highlights
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Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood talk about touring as a married couple
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Former homeless man vows to pay it forward
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Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood talk about the things money can buy
