Columns

As we live through historic events that arrive not every day but every hour, I’m thinking of the future as well as the present.

I have gazed into America’s future and what I saw was grown men tossing bean bags at a small hole drilled in a tilted plank of polished wood.

I’ve been hauling around the virus particles for better than 40 years, taking them to mountaintops and to some of Germany’s finest cathedrals, among other scenic sites, and not once have the l…

My wife said she saw a mosquito on her windshield the second week of February.

Movie director Quentin Tarantino not only dissolved the mystique that has made Charles Manson such an icon for half a century, but the filmmaker showed the criminal and his murderous acolytes …

Movie director Quentin Tarantino not only dissolved the mystique that has made Charles Manson such an icon for half a century, but the filmmaker showed the criminal and his murderous acolytes …

I recently bought an mp3 player and when I sat down with the user manual to try to figure out how to make it work the only two consecutive words that made sense to me in the entire document we…

When you write about government inefficiency you risk indulging in cliché, and I strive to avoid the pitfall of predictability.

I was watching TV coverage of President Trump’s impeachment trial the other evening and I couldn’t help but wonder how different things might be if Trump were more like Calvin Coolidge.

“What was it like?”

I once examined a kidney stone, fresh from my own bladder (albeit rinsed with tap water), and I was appalled.

For me it all started what seems a long time ago, in a town quite a ways from Baker City.

The word “news” is, you’ve no doubt noticed, pretty much the same as “new.”

I have for many years — many more, indeed, than I would prefer — harbored an irrational fear of being stuck with nothing good to read.

Happy New Year! The calendar has taken another faithful leap from the end of one year to the beginning of another and hopes are running high. January is often prime time for personal and profe…

On Nov. 5, 1994, I guided my slightly decrepit but always dogged International Scout II through the drifts of an early blizzard, at the risk of getting mired and possibly having to set the sea…

The greatest character in cinema history is Cousin Eddie from the “Vacation” film franchise.

I think the Baker City Herald is a bargain.

I was debating the other day whether to shell out 26 bucks for a new book, but then I checked my email and discovered that my financial worries are over, and probably for the rest of my life.

When I was a boy I considered it a grand treat to go with my dad to the gas station.

My son Max rested his head on my shoulder and told me he was “really glad” I had asked him to lie there on our couch and watch “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

If you get a chance to examine a 2020 Chevrolet Corvette and you pop the hood, expecting to gaze upon the mechanical majesty that is the classic overhead-valve V-8 engine, prepare for a shock.

An email that prominently features the words “food” and “tester” and “free” is as irresistible to me as the film “Point Break,” the chorus of Duran Duran’s “Rio,” and Oreo cookie filling.

I hadn’t thought of trick-or-treating as a particularly poignant event until I went to Meadowbrook Place and saw the smiles of residents as they dropped candy bars and lollipops into kids’ bags.

Some pieces of Baker City’s history haven’t been exposed to sunlight for decades.

You might assume that because I derive my livelihood from working in the news media I would endorse any law intended to protect journalists from physical harm while they’re doing their jobs.

The record-shattering October chill, even as it was pilfering my bank account to keep the furnace stoked with kilowatt-hours, was stealing into my yard and ruining the riot of color I’ve come …

I never met Andy Dennis but I wish I had even once shared a wilderness campfire with him. I think we could have swapped stories for the better part of an evening, sharing the pleasant duty of …

I haven’t paid much attention to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in the 33 years since its first class was inducted.

If I wrote that all liberals are the same because they support labor unions and believe restrictions on abortions are unconstitutional you might accuse me of both generalizing and stereotyping.

Change is in the air. It’s not just the falling temperatures or the return of the school year. Within the walls of The Observer and Baker City Herald, the way we do business is being completel…

There is nothing quite so depressing as that moment when you must accept the reality of a new and spectacular example of your own unique brand of ineptitude.

Weather forecasters can spy on storms from space, and they have some of the cleverest computer models at their disposal, but the atmosphere still throws them an occasional curveball.

I slapped my left ear, rendering myself temporarily half-deaf and possibly concussed, and it was at that moment that I surrendered to the bugs.