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As I drive around the Skagit Valley, I am blown away by the beautiful cloud formations I am seeing. If I am able to pull over in a safe place along the road, I stop and take a cloud photo. I am inviting my readers to do the same thing and share their pictures with me at [email protected] and we will publish the winning photo in next month's column....
Okay, are you sitting down? You are about to be very surprised by what this progressive liberal is about to say. I am very much in favor of the death penalty for murderers who are absolutely guilty of their crimes. Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon in 1980 as Lennon was walking into his apartment at The Dakota in Manhattan. Chapman remained at the scene reading J.D. Salinger’s novel “The Catcher in the Rye” until he was arrested by police. Chapman is still alive. He has been interviewed by...
Talk about mixed emotions: My close friend, Father William Treacy, died last week at the amazing age of 103, and I will miss him so much, but I will also join in the joyous celebrations of his incredible life. Several years ago, I was looking for a place to teach my film and acting classes and heard about a 200-acre property in Skagit County that had buildings that were vacant much of the year. When I got there, I found out that it was now the Treacy-Levine Center, a place where Palestinian...
Remember the Birdman of Alcatraz? I am introducing you to the Birdman of Shelter Bay. I'm buying a house in Shelter Bay with different feeding areas, including a bird watering hole. I'm converting one of my patios to a seed station. About 55 years ago, give or take, I was hired to work at a sleep-away camp in New Hampshire. It was a big deal because I was the only one of my friends who could not afford to be a camper, but now I was going as a counselor. The only opening was to be the rifle...
Being a caffeine addict, I was excited to welcome La Conner's new Beaver Tales Coffee & Tea and indigenous gift shop and what I found was so much more than another excellent local outlet to satisfy my addiction. The owners, Michelle Calvin and her mate Tony Cladoosby, roast coffee in small batches daily to ensure freshness. They are committed to bringing so much more to La Conner than a great cup of coffee. They are a diverse couple and they want to celebrate diversity in our town. Tony is a...
Driving around on garbage pickup day in my neighborhood, I noticed a tremendous amout of cardboard stacked up alongside the recycling bins. Hmmmm. What’s going on? Then I realized how much cardboard I had put out myself because of the many orders my wife had made via Amazon and other online retailers. Obviously, COVID-19 has had a tremendous effect on in-person shopping. For the past couple of years, the numbers of home deliveries have skyrocketed. For many of us, that is a big relief because we...
Live and 24/7, you can tune into the Russian invasion in Ukraine at any time day or night and get up-to-date horrifying footage and totally depressing expert analysis of what’s going on right this minute. Unlike any war in the past, modern technology and streaming television accessibility means whenever we turn on the television we can see updated reports on the devastation that is taking place in real time. CNN, for example, has taken advantage of this and sent a steady stream of hosts and c...
I was blown away this winter by the number of birds that I passed by as I drove all around Skagit Valley, including fields filled with snow geese and eagles in trees being photographed by many birdwatchers. Hooray, I thought, birds are making a comeback! I checked with my friend Libby Mills who is a leading bird expert and has been teaching people about birds for 50 years or so. Libby is a naturalist who is associated with the Padilla Bay Interpretive Center, the North Cascades Institute and a f...
Okay, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but sometimes as a journalist, you gotta tell it like it is, especially when people’s lives are at stake. The coronavirus ain’t going away. The consensus of all the studies that I have been following is that, while the omicron variant is not as deadly as the delta variant, it is extremely pervasive. My natural journalistic impulse to share the sad truth with my readers that has inspired me to do a lot of research and the results just confirm what I sus...
I was really surprised to read that the WHO were deciding what to name each new strain of the coronavirus. I loved the WHO, they were one of my very favorite bands, although I had trouble both times I went to see them in person. The first time was at the Flushing Meadows in the Queens, New York outdoor arena, when they opened for The Doors. I had asked a high school friend to join me and I promised her mother that it would be safe to attend a rock concert. When the Who finished the first set,...
I’m addicted to my hot tub, especially on wintry days. I’m thrilled that I live on the left edge of the continent with a great view of the islands and even a glimpse of the Olympic Peninsula. Being an overactive person, these are particularly trying times for me. Often, as soon as I sit down, it occurs to me that there is something I forgot to do and I jump right up. To keep this from happening in the hot tub, I invented a little game in which I locate a small particle floating in the water. I l...
I finally had the courage to go to my synagogue in Bellingham last week and there were only nine of us actually there in person plus Rabbi Josh Samuels and Cantor Andrea Shupak. Others were attending via Zoom but it didn’t seem like a big turnout. We know that COVID-19 will have a big place in our history books because it has affected people’s lives in so many ways, short and long term, from losing loved ones to starting to new careers. I reached out to the contributors to the monthly Our Faith...
Let’s start this column on a positive note. As a species, we continue to evolve. A perfect example is my buddy William Shatner, who spent many hours in space in a television series many years ago and, holy moly, just finished a real space mission sponsored by zillionaire Jeff Bezos. I’ve spent many hours with Shatner and never saw him expressing the ecstasy he showed after a real space mission. We’re starting to make some progress on combating climate change and we’ve been able to see a reversa...
These are very challenging times for so many reasons. Many of us have lost loved ones, some of us have lost our jobs or had them shut down, hopefully for the time being. This are especially trying times for people like me who are very social and love to be out and about. Ironically, as much as I love directing television, my shpilkes makes it very difficult for me to hunker down at home. “Shpilkes” is Yiddish for a playful gas and a fun way to describe being ADHD. Fortunately, I chose this tim...
I lost my wallet. I had no idea where, it just wasn’t in my pocket or on the top of the dresser where I leave it at night. Big hassle. Canceling and replacing credit cards and ID cards and my driver’s license. Oh, let’s not forget the $400 plus I had in cash in that wallet. For starters, I got a new wallet and I carried my passport in it so I had one form of ID. I got new credit cards and spent time at the DMV waiting in line to apply for a new driver’s license. Got it all done. Big sigh of...
I recently said goodbye to my Uncle Harry Rosenfeld. Three weeks ago, when our part of the world was experiencing record high temperatures, I flew across the country to Albany, New York to visit my famous 91-year-old uncle who had contracted COVID-19 in his retirement home. We hugged, we chatted. I took pictures of Harry and my wonderful aunt Annie and I left knowing that it was likely that this was the last time we would be together. Last week, I got to watch Harry’s funeral live online. It w...
In the summer of 1969, I was in the south of France, visiting my cousins, when Neil Armstrong took a stroll on the moon. The event blew my mind. I am not very technically savvy, so it was beyond my comprehension that something like that could be accomplished. And it made me think that our world and our country, were extremely advanced. More than 50 years have gone by and it is abundantly clear how wrong I was. Let’s just look at the start of the year 2021. Mass shootings in the United States i...
Gun violence in the United States is exploding. Over 7500 people have been killed so far this year and it is only May. And that does not include unjustified police shootings which continue to rise. That is something we are acutely aware of because it is getting a lot of coverage on television, radio and in our daily newspapers. What has not gotten much coverage is the revelation that pollution from American farms is expanding exponentially. Most meat, milk and eggs produced in the United States...
As Bob Seger eloquently expressed in song, it’s time for Americans to “Turn the Page.” Just when you thought gun ownership in this country could not get worse, it becomes totally out of control. Mass shootings are becoming commonplace. The Trump administration brought out the haters, literally speaking, as a mob descended on the U.S. Capitol. That resulted in several killings and the arrests are still happening. Two policemen committed suicide as a result of the event, and police suicides are o...
COVID-19 has been demanding social isolation, which is a real challenge for someone like me. But isolation does not mean stagnation and I have been blessed with a wonderful companion, my dog Rosie, who turns 1-year-old on April Fool’s Day. Rosie and I spend a lot of time driving around Skagit County admiring what a beautiful place we get to live in. When I see something particularly stunning, I stop my car and take my iPhone out of my pocket and snap a picture, like the one you are looking at r...
While so much of our economy is suffering from COVID-19 these days, there is the beginning of what I believe to be a sea change that is actually stimulating the real estate market in places like La Conner. First of all, La Conner is awesome. For most of us, that’s the only reason we are here. In a small town like this, there aren’t large employers attracting people from all over the country. Yes, there are small businesses like our mayor’s wonderful jewelry shop and there is our local newsp...
I passed a sign on someone’s front lawn in Mount Vernon last week that read: “Dementia Joe? Heels Up Harris? Lord Help Us All.” Obviously, these people must be devastated and I am dedicating this column to them. If the election went their way, I had a plan in place to create Cascadia, including Washington, Oregon and California. The new “country” would still be technically part of the USA but with its own healthcare, its own intolerance for racism and anti-Semitism and its own support of public...
Covid-19 has us flying by the seat of our pants without an indication of where to land. That is a great headline about a vaccine but when you get down to the real nitty gritty of how and when and where you go about getting vaccinated, it is very hard to get information. I realize that medical workers and people in retirement homes are at the front of the line, and people in my age group and older are supposedly next, but how and where do we sign up? I am trying to get my pal, Father William...
I know the suspense is killing you if you read my piece last week about whether to fly or not to fly to California to have Thanksgiving dinner with my sister and her extended family. Wisely, I listened to the experts and opted to stay here, where I am re-designing Thanksgiving and calling it Thankful Giving. Because of the COVID-19 crisis and a federal government stymied by partisanship, we have a growing number of fellow Americans who are homeless and hungry. For those of us who are blessed to...
My flight to L.A. has been booked for a month. I get to see my kids, whom I have not seen in many months, and I get to have Thanksgiving Dinner with my sister and her large family in Palm Springs and I get to play golf and tennis without the threat of rain. Sounds great with one tiny exception: COVID-19! The virus is spiraling out of control in the U.S. and the governors of California, Oregon and Washington have asked people to stay home and avoid crowds. Chances are I will be okay. Allegiant...
