Yearly Archives: 2021

Every now and then I wonder about the cultural historians who will have to — presumably straight-faced — write a history of the past few years in America. A little over a year ago, I wrote a column for this very website about the death of Mr. Peanut: the monocle-sporting Planter’s Peanuts mascot (his death, it turned out, was greatly exaggerated). I thought at the time we’d reached the nadir of late modernity. I was wrong. The latest cultural outcry concerns Mr. Potato Head. T

Once upon a time, the US space program faced a major challenge in their Atlas rocket program. It seems they had a corrosion problem caused by moisture that needed to be fixed. The challenge was to create a formula capable of displacing water and thus preventing corrosion. So, one Norm Larsen went to work, concocting formula after formula until finally - after 39 failed attempts - he hit on a successful mixture on trial number 40 and - da-da - Water Displacement formula #40 was born - better known today as WD-40. It’s now estimated that up to eighty percent of us have a can of the stuff in our homes.

While I was away from the paper for a couple of weeks, several people came up to me at the Destination, my favorite coffee shop where my friends and I meet every morning. They ask why there was nothing written by me for the paper recently. Good question.

The Wheelhouse Skating Rink in Hemet is very large, encompassing 9,000 square feet of skate surface, which is expensive to keep up whether people are skating nor not. Due to COVID 19 restrictions for the past year there has been no public skating. In order to keep the place alive and producing some income, unusual machinations have surfaced.

The White House began highlighting the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill immediately after it gained final congressional approval on Wednesday, wasting no time in selling the public on President Joe Biden’s first legislative victory.