Trees are seasonal storytellers. Intriguing beginnings. Cloaked in the middle. An inevitable pile up at the end. You wonder where the time went. I conversed with my trees the other day, hauling the fractured limbs, plot lines from the recent windstorm, and engulfing myself in a dusty encyclopedia of leaves. There’s always more to do [...]

You see piles of things before you see people. Pinwheels, smiley-face balloons, sun-bleached American flags, potted plants, tattered chairs, chewed-up stuffed animals, tents, Tuff Sheds, huts of plywood, huts of plastic bags and tarpaulins, concrete storm sewer casings branded with “Piranha” and a scattering of barking dogs. You hear names assigned to places, names that [...]

Atop the tallest building in Clovis, I favored looking to the west. That’s how I’ve always driven to Clovis Community Medical Centers in the 23 years since it relocated from the tidy, tiny confines of DeWitt Avenue. West is likely where the stores will continue to bloom, at least initially, as hospital expansion plays out [...]

We’d sit eating fried fish, gazing out an E Street window as a Friday’s boiling sun set. He wore overalls, doing the hands-on equipment work that produced a daily Fresno Bee. I wore a shirt and tie, fidgeting with words to avoid libel, writing a few snappy headlines to lure readers and with deadlines wrapped [...]

It’s a year old. A chunk of people still want to flat out kill it. Another hunk want to gussy it up a bit and let it become an adult. And who knows how many millions haven’t a clue that it exists, let alone whether it’s a savior or a villain. Happy first birthday, health [...]

The hats, scarves, blankets go to new — Terry’s House — and familiar places — Marjaree Mason Center, Poverello House, newborns at Clovis Community Medical Center. My wife has been making them by the thousand over the last several years. Don’t want to put words in her mouth, but I know most of her donations [...]