Letters & Opinions

According to Merriam-Webster, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of definitions of “kind.” Anything of the kind; be kind enough; be so kind, five of a kind, in-kind, kind of, nothing of the kind, of one kind or another, anything of the kind, nothing of the kind, be kind enough, be so kind. The uses go on ad-infinitum. Take your choice. The one I’d like to discuss is the kind of way we treat each other.

One sunny afternoon, as Bob and I drove down Lamb’s Canyon, we noticed about fifteen people lined up along the top of a deep ravine, just staring down into the side of the canyon. Thinking something was amiss, we pulled over and joined the lookie-loos. And then we saw it - a car had plunged down the steep side of the hill and had flipped over at the bottom, leaving two scared teens in distress. One was standing but his friend was not moving and laying flat on his back.

Pardon me for a little of what we used to call a “reporter’s notebook” story. An old truism exists in broadcast journalism that “there’s a story around every corner.” I first learned that in 1996 but, unfortunately, I just learned it again today. Russian bombs and bullets, and Putin’s psychotic ego, have destroyed one of the very few good things to come out of a worldwide disaster 35 years ago.

There are two legal systems in California – one dispenses justice to those who can afford an attorney, the other steamrolls those who can’t.

Rising gas prices are an immediate problem — rising seas are not. Yet in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Biden had nothing new to say about bringing gas prices down. Releasing a few barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is not a solution; it's a Band-Aid that will last about two days. Yet all that Biden can do is repeat the outworn bromide that global warming is a catastrophe bringing drought, storms, and rising seas.