Opinion

As a reader of Pine Nuts might attest, we have never been a student of grammar. Grammar is why we left Jolly Old England in the first place to create a grammar of our own. And if punctuation was not one of the grievances against King George listed in the Declaration of Independence, well, it should have been.

Life on Earth is good, mostly, unless you're a moth, and fly too close to the flame. It's an interesting journey for us humans to be sure. We're always seeking a reason for our being here, and usually come up with something expansive like, "to make the world a better place," when the real reason is, "to tie this shoe."

CARSON CITY — Last Friday marked the legislative deadline for committee passage in the first house, meaning that bills not voted out of committee by then (except for those specifically marked for deadline exemption) are now dead.

As a former cross country coach I enjoy watching people run, and I do it with a critical eye. "Oh-oh! This gentleman is supinating and will not last another mile at that pace." Sometimes I will pick up my own walking pace to try to find out if I am in fact right, and when I am, well, I drop off to the side and buy myself a cup of coffee.

I've gotten myself into some jams before, but nothing like this one. It all started when a temple screw fell out of my reading glasses, and being the son of an optometrist, I determined to fix those glasses myself. Bad judgement. I have never been handy in that way.

Longevity for the Nevada man is projected to be 75.6 years, probably because we drink, smoke, gamble, and stay up 'til midnight howling at the moon. However, low as that number may be, it would be lower yet, were it not for saintly Nevada women who will be the saving of us.

As recently reported in this fine family journal, your Nevada neighbor and age-old fossil McAvoy was a lifeguard at Lake Tahoe away back in the summer of '61 at the tender age of 17.

I read a lot. So much so that often even if I enjoyed the read, I might soon forget the formulaic content as I immerse myself in the next book. One book, however, that continues to stick with me is "The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant.

After one year's absence from the wreck center I was a wreck, a mere shadow of my original self. I was convinced, if the pandemic didn't kill me, it would make me wish I was dead, or at least cramp my style to the point where I wouldn't recognize myself in the mirror, even when that mirror was fogged-up. But then along came Stumpy's.

One of the great characters forged here in the Tahoe Basin did not answer roll call this morning, as yesterday he was called home from this green earth, and is now Heaven's Pit Boss, Mark Pilarski.

Zoom meetings are like Near Beer, you don't get a buzz, but you still get the weight gain. However, when Kevin Sung called from the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative at the Northern Nevada International Center, well, I jumped in with both virtual feet. We agreed to a Zoomed Cultural Session with young entrepreneurs from 10 countries who desired to meet our mutual friend, albeit really bad businessman, Mark Twain.

As the country continues to grapple with COVID-19, health care officials are reminding seniors and caregivers to be on high alert for scammers. Some of the most common scams targeting seniors include strangers claiming to be with Medicare or a health insurance company to obtain personal information, or lure individuals into false investment opportunities through various scare tactics.

The inventor of the brassiere clasp was an American icon who gets no credit for this singular foundation garment fastener, nada, zippo! It remains a travesty of history that this oversight has been ignored for so long, and the time has come to shed a bright light on the petrified truth.

On my way to college away back in the last century, I landed a summer job that a boy could only dream of having, "lifeguard at the Sands, South Shore, Lake Tahoe." So it was with a broad smile that I drove my ’55 Chevy to the lake and found a room to rent for those three months of summer, 1961.

If there's one thing in God's Green Acre I cannot abide, it's a fraud. And I don't come by this singular prejudice from my father nor my mother, no, I come by it from Mark Twain, who had an uncanny nose for frauds.

Climate change: Is it real? Yes! Is there something that you can do? Yes! A few years ago I became more aware and concerned about our environment. My concern was elevated based upon what I was reading, hearing and witnessing.

I glanced up from my paper this morning to see a news alert: "Hammerin' Hank Aaron Dies at 86!" Oh, no! My memory raced away, back to 1974, where in the face of numerous death threats, Hank went after the Babe's revered homerun record, and smashed it. I wish I could have known him.

Like Will Rogers, I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm an OLTACer, as in Old Lake Tahoe Athletic Club, "Old" being the operative word. Yes, we are 10 members strong, and our good-natured motto is, "I don't give a (fill in the blank with your own inappropriate word) what you think."

I get a lot of demands these days from politically correct socialists who whine and try to tell me what I can and cannot say, and/or how.

As a general rule I don't let anyone tell me what to say or think. I don’t tell other people what to; say, think or do and I don’t let others censor my thoughts or words. First Amendment precedent establishes my right to say almost anything, within reason, and everyone has this same right because government is expressly prohibited, by our Constitution, from abridging any peaceful speech (or thought) in America.

It has become my obsession over the past 10 months to ascertain exactly how little or next to nothing I can do, and still be counted as, "amongst the living." This act of social downsizing has taken me all the way down to the examination of lullabies.

Truth matters. Character matters. Liberty matters. And for these reasons, I’m a man without a party.
I left the GOP yesterday, at least, officially. I may have just changed my voter registration to nonpartisan, but I didn’t vote for Trump back in 2016.

One of the most overlooked pieces of noteworthy scientific advancement buried by the pandemic of 2020 occurred in Uruguay. Yes, right out of Ripley's Believe It or Not, a group of Uruguayan scientists announced that they had successfully modified the genetic makeup of a group of sheep to make them glow in the dark.

Most of us might agree, 2020 was the annus horribilis of our lifetime. But just as the darkest cloud has a silver lining, 2020 has offered one thing about which we can all brag and be proud. I can't think of what that one thing might be just now, though it does occur to me that learning how to cut our own hair might be a thing to celebrate and be genuinely proud, unless of course you're a barber.

Of the many lessons to be learned from 2020, not the least of which is that there's no such thing as a non-essential person.

To insist otherwise degrades the value of human dignity. Kind of like the way Henry F. Potter made George Bailey feel on Christmas Eve one year at the end of World War II.

This time of year I always think about Cappy. In charge of Ski Incline in the early days, Cappy Cook was a hail-fellow-well-met, on and off the slopes. He played in the Rose Bowl for Stanford in '52, ran a packing outfit in Yosemite, coached our Junior National Ski Team, and his handshake would leave me crippled for days, so of course I never ventured to give him a hug.

Science has always been a passion of mine, partly because I flunked science in high school and have never understood why. But I stumbled upon a gemstone of science the other day that would make the most lettered academic in the world smile.

To say 2020 was a crazy and eventful year would be an understatement. I think just about everyone can agree on that. But in the midst of a pandemic, a summer of protests, and an election year that shattered records, (pick a category, any catagory) it seems nevadans also found alot to disagree on. It was easy to see if one attended any of these protests.

When Bobby Kennedy was tragically shot and killed in 1968, his killer was set upon and wrestled to the ground by Rafer Johnson. For those too young to remember, Rafer Johnson was the first black captain of a United States Olympic Team, and was crowned the best all-around athlete in the world when he won the decathlon in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

On a recent Saturday night I went to see the James Bond classic Goldfinger at Carson Stadium Cinemas, 2571 N Carson St. I'd seen that movie when it was released in 1964, and I have the DVD as part of a boxed set of James Bond films, but I was thrilled when it appeared on the marquee because there is nothing like seeing a movie made for the big screen on an actual big screen.

Most of us have long known from personal experience that humor, laughter and smiling are good for us. So it is reassuring to read Doctor Miller's assessment: “Heightened stress magnifies the risk of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes. Having a good sense of humor is an excellent way to relieve stress and anxiety and bring back a sense of normalcy during these turbulent times."