Columns

Thanksgiving and other holidays that are centered around a table full of family, friends and festive foods are a most welcome time for sociable conversations. And, boy, could we all use plenty of that right now. We have lots of catching up to do with post-fire and post-outage and pre-holidays. We don’t suppose everyone could leave their smart phones behind and drop any impulses to interject political chatter at the holiday table, could we?

Holiday Closure

Peach season has begun. Our 20th season. Hard to believe. When we bought the farm, Patrick was a baby and now he’s 21. Eusebio, our invaluable farm manager, has been with us from the start, and we are forever grateful. Brian and I, well,...

This Week in H’burg is a weekly column featuring photos and fun facts from local photographer Pierre Ratté. Each week we’ll feature a new photo from Ratté along with a fact about the subject matter of the photo.

We are a racist country with a culture of tolerating it. This can’t be news to anyone.

It’s now been a full year of living under the physical, health-related and emotional restrictions imposed upon all of us by the coronavirus pandemic. The first shelter-in-place edict from the county’s public health officer was issued on March 16, 2020. We have felt at times like we aren’t really living so much as we are just merely surviving. Walking around with half-covered faces, not seeing smiles, and separated from co-workers, neighbors, grandparents and schoolmates is a real downer. That we have kept it together this well, for this long, is a miracle. Salute yourself.

Why in the world are we on Mars? Surely, we’re not bored with life on Earth, are we? We’ve got plenty to keep us occupied with a coronavirus pandemic, injured economy, crazy weather and mobs of people at each other’s throats. Forget all of that, our smartest scientists say. First, they want to know if there might have ever been any life on Mars.