Beyond Cuckoo

According to GOOGLE, today would be John Steinbeck’s 112^th birthday. I like to think that the days of harassment, poverty and fear that Steinbeck describes in “The Grapes of Wrath” are history. Yet today I read about King City, in the beautiful Salinas Valley, where the acting police chief and several officers were charged with selling impounded cars of poor Hispanic residents.

Apparently, ...

I don’t normally watch NBC’s Meet the Press. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the program, but my viewership goes back to my childhood. On Sunday mornings, the show simply got beat out by cartoons. As an adult, I don’t normally watch cartoons—until this morning.

I became familiar with Bill Nye, when my husband, Blake Webster, interviewed him for his book, “Environmentalists in ...

The Nut Job!

Apparently there is a growing (pun intended) concern in California’s San Joaquin Valley surrounding walnut heists. One of the most recent involved the theft of 140,000 pounds of hulled and dried walnuts worth an estimated $400,000. Unfortunately this was not an isolated incident—agricultural crime is on the rise. Some believe the Russians are behind it—I kid you not. One suspect was detained in Bakersfield, where he told police that he ...