This past week, my parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, and I stood in front of the greeting card rack for a very long time.

When faced with two women who each claimed to be the mother of the same child, King Solomon announced that he would slice the child in two and give half to each claimant. One woman was pleased. The other wailed in sorrow, and begged the king to give the child to her opponent.

Recently, I found myself standing in front of my old house in Philadelphia. From 1966, when I was 4, until 1969, when we moved to Delaware County, I lived in the two-story quasi-Victorian on the 5400 block of North 12th Street.

Howzabout a little three-part treatise on unrelated matters? Since you have no choice, then here goes:

This is the second of a two-part column focusing on former Navy Flier Chuck Baldock’s nearly seven years as a North Vietnamese POW from 1966 to 1973.

The Citizens Water Advocacy Group (CWAG) believes that citizens in the Quad-City area must tell their elected officials they want them to begin now to create a water management plan that will produce long-term water security.

Just when I think I’m doing something really important and feeling indispensable, I’m jolted back to reality.

The clock has run out.

This time of year, it is easy to see why Prescott is such a wonderful place to live, learn, work and play.

Just a few brief weeks into the 2019 Major League Baseball season, incontrovertible evidence has surfaced that computerized balls and strike calls cannot be far away.

After hundreds of Roman Catholics were killed in an Islamist terror attack last Sunday, Hillary Clinton tweeted out the following:

Accelerated depletion of groundwater in the Prescott Active Management Area (PrAMA) — as well as above the headwaters of the upper Verde River — began in the mid-1990s.

Fifty years ago, in 1969 when astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon, the world’s population was 3.6 billion; in 2019, it’s 7.7 billion.

About the time that the #MeToo movement really started to get traction in 2017, I compared it to the Salem witch trials.

There was a time when, if I was thinking of buying a pair of new shoes, my only consideration was how they looked on me. If they pinched or pained me, I was willing to put up with it until they were “broken in”.

The older I become, the more solace I get from small victories.

When we were kids, reality and imagination were often blurred.

Are you a baseball fanatic? Do you look forward to the smell of freshly cut infield grass and the whiff of leather from a glove? Do you love the sound of a pitch pounding the catcher’s mitt, or the crack of the bat when the ball is squared up?

Prescott recently announced the collapse of negotiations to protect the Granite Dells from the destructive private “South Annexation” development proposed by Arizona Eco Development (AED).

Spring training is underway, and fans whose passion for baseball dates back decades brace themselves for more game-altering, useless and annoying changes. Major League Baseball commissioner Rob “Meddling” Manfred is back at it with more dumb ideas that will, if implemented, distract from the game on the field.

Since tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, many people throughout the country and the world over have been preparing for the event for quite some time.

The British are coming! Yes, it is that time of year again! Would you like some chips?

This headline in Tuesday’s Courier jumped out at me; “Lawmakers vote to allow parents dropping kids off at school to carry loaded guns.”

I’m a native Californian who grew up in the 1950s when the state was truly Golden.

Sadie’s name and situation are generalized for purposes of this column, which reflects my volunteer association with Kindred Hospice in Prescott.

There are many questions one might ask of our great institutions of sports. Is the NFL doing enough to protect against concussions on the field?

America has a bunch of foundational myths - George Washington and his famed cherry tree, the belief that anyone can get ahead if they just work hard enough and the stubborn belief that our occasionally sputtering constitutional republic is still more exceptional than any other nation on Earth.

Robert Kraft is being charged with soliciting prostitutes. That’s not news, sadly, since a lot of people - including high-profile people - pay for sex.

If Prescott and its surrounding towns continue with their rapid, rabid growth, population explosion, instant housing developments, and demolition derby traffic – problems mostly attributed to Californians migrating here – we will have to change the areas name from Quad Cities, and begin calling it “Calicott.”

Back in 1959, Alfred Hitchcock came up with that thriller of a movie titled “North By Northwest.”

New York Yankees’ great Joe DiMaggio is widely considered one of the top 10 players in Major League Baseball history.

I assume every American no matter their religious or political beliefs, is interested in having secure borders.

February the 14th this year is on a Thursday.

It all started in 1896. It ends now in 2019. Here in downtown Chino Valley.

“Celebrating the holidays with friends and family the past few weeks was great, but I’m tired, bloated and crabby.”

All indicators point to another productive and prosperous year in 2019, in our city and region.

“I alone can fix it.”

Okay, maybe it’s a little misleading for me to headline a column “Celebrities We’ll Lose In 2019.”

I am on record as a staunch supporter of Christmas. However, this time of year, I like to borrow just one component from another tradition - Festivus.

Here’s how the Opposition Media’s beloved “bipartisan cooperation” works among the residents of Incumbentstan here in Washington, DC.

An unspectacular Bureau of Labor Statistics November report casts doubt on the health of the job market in 2019.

I read with interest the article on coyote hunts or control and the opposition to them from local citizens.

Does your workplace have a tradition of employees giving a Christmas gift (er, holiday gift ... um, scrupulously secular seasonal transfer of goods) to the boss?

Hi, I’m Kyle Hon. I’m a 10-year-old boy. I’m just a regular-looking kid on the outside, but I was born with high functioning autism.

We’ve been taught a lesson which we would do well to commit to memory. It’s a lesson about love, respect and what is possible when, as one of my academic colleagues said, we see those on the opposite side as rivals rather than enemies.

For California natives like me, the wildfires are a real gut punch. The wildfires are the deadliest in the state’s history with at least 76 fatalities, and hundreds unaccounted for. More than 10,000 buildings are gone, and more than 230,000 acres have burned.

During a July 25, 1961, speech, John F. Kennedy said, “The freedom of the city is not negotiable. We cannot negotiate with those who say, ‘What is mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.’”

Imagine you moved to your dream home, thinking that the town’s plan for the front door of your neighborhood was reasonable—only to learn it may be changed in a most unwelcome way.

Annexation applications by the Deep Well Ranch and Arizona Eco developments have awakened public concern about growth.

Did you realize that November 24 marks the 100th birthday of the venerable (and still-published) comic strip “Gasoline Alley?”

After living in Washington, D.C., for nearly eight years, I love being back home in Pittsburgh.

There’s no doubt that our society, along with the rest of the developed world, admires wealth.

To all of my friends who happen to be Democrats -- and I do have many — I offer the following: If you’re enjoying the presidential stylings of Donald J.

I read the news today, oh boy. And by “read” I mean skimmed. And by “news” I mean aggregates.

This column is a painful one. I’ve decided to lay bare the love affair, then the estrangement from my favorite beverage of all time, Coca-Cola.

In a free market, you don’t get something for nothing, but that’s what Arizona Eco Development (AED) is asking for.

Say it ain’t so: Alcohol in moderation is bad for us again!

For baseball bugs, to use the 1900’s word for fans, October is the sweetest month – play in, play off, and eventually World Series games.

The Democrats and their parrots and lapdogs in the liberal media never stop accusing people on the right of being racists, sexists and homophobes.

For many years, I have been hearing that iceberg lettuce is a worthless form of green leaves that should be shunned and even banned from the kitchen.

Hoping that a child will be raped is the vilest thought that can be formed in the civilized brain. There is no “larger picture,” no justification, no explanatory context. Unfortunately, it’s no longer out of bounds in social discourse.

An in-depth newspaper investigation revealed that a state-operated home for aged military veterans was providing sub-standard care and that taxpayer money that was to go to improve the home was spent elsewhere. The result was the replacement of the state’s veterans secretary and numerous corrections at the home.

According to the latest Gallup poll, the congressional approval rate is currently just 19 percent, with 76 percent disapproving. Congress’ miserable showing surprises no one. After Election Day, campaign promises abruptly vanish, and are replaced by an agenda that voters would never have supported.

Arizona water laws fundamentally threaten the upper Verde River.

Children seldom complain about vision problems. Rather, according to the Eyes on Learning Vision Coalition, “they believe everyone sees the world the way they do.” But the coalition notes that “80 percent of children’s learning is through their eyes.

It was a long, embarrassing day of drama, tears and ugly partisan bickering. But by the end of last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, I came to the conclusion that both Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford had told the truth.

“The number of undocumented immigrants in the United States: Estimates based on demographic modeling with data from 1990 to 2016,” a new study published in the peer-reviewed science journal, PLOS ONE, found that the illegal immigration population in the United States has been, for years, dramatically underestimated.

Hurricane Florence tearing up the south Atlantic coast is nothing compared to the hypocrisies tearing up our country over Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Brett Kavanaugh tried to pull off her clothes at an alcohol-fueled house party when they were teenage minors.

“Republicans like to talk about fiscal discipline, but when they have control of Congress they spend like drunken sailors!”

I love Lindsay Graham. The witty South Carolina senator, who’s usually more entertaining than most comedians, has been one of the highlights of the otherwise depressing televised Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

From an unlikely place — deep red Kansas — comes a plot to add to the cheap labor workforce. In 2016, President Trump carried Kansas by more than 20 points. Nevertheless, Republican U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder, from Kansas’ 3rd District, joined up with other cheap labor addicts to subvert American workers.

Heading into the midterms, it’s a good idea to take stock of what you really want and don’t want from “your” government.

I am of an age that I lose things. Car keys. An occasional train of thought. Family members.

I used to root for crazy. In fact, as a lifelong Democrat, I was thrilled when President Trump announced he was running for president.

“Here we are in peak vacation season, but I’m afraid to take my paid vacation time off!”

When good people fight for freedom and peace, the rest of us should fight for them.

Once, August was a tranquil time on Capitol Hill. But that’s no longer the case.

Social Security is here for young people when a parent passes away. We know that the loss of a parent isn’t just emotionally painful; it can be devastating to a family’s finances. In the same way that Social Security helps to lift up the disabled and elderly when they need it, we support families when an income-earning parent dies.

As I was filling out my early ballot this morning, I looked out across the street and saw the rolling hillsides laden with Ponderosa pine and scrub. The same hillsides were also speckled with houses in Timber Ridge and beyond.