Over the past few months, I’ve seen more people on the trails than ever. A May 7 article in the Courier reported that use of city trails has doubled as people have ventured out for socially distant exercise.

Recently, one of the premier business innovators of the 20th century, Jack Welch, passed away.

The accusations of pedophilia in the Catholic church have never faded from the public eye.

Have you heard of the recent movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”?

President Trump has presided over a booming economy and stock market, and trillion-dollar tech companies are leading the way.

We need to maintain our roads to protect our families and the people we care about.

Perhaps you’ve heard this old Scottish proverb/poem as a child or read it in a book of nursery rhymes to your own child:

I’m just a little crestfallen now that the college football bowl season has ended.

David Bowie released a single of his song “Changes” the day before his 25th birthday.

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced that they were “stepping back” from their duties as senior royals, it triggered a number of interesting reactions on this side of the pond.

As a Legislative District 1 resident, I am concerned about the current movement to try to make Yavapai County a Second Amendment Sanctuary County.

Americans love a good countdown. Christmas is only 330 days from the date of writing this column.

Growing older definitely has both an upside and a downside. Those of us of a certain age know the physical downside all too well.

As you may or may not be aware, I have served on the City of Prescott’s Water Subcommittee for a couple of decades; and, I am so very proud of our water track record. Moreover, I am convinced that what we are discussing regarding the geographical expansion of both our water and wastewater service provisions in the future are really the right things to do.

I never said I was going away, simply because I didn’t win an election.

The coming new year is not only the end of 2019 but also the end of a decade. What better time to let go of old stresses and strains and grab a fresh start with gusto!

From our inception, Save the Dells has worked to secure a fair deal in which Arizona Eco Development (AED) protects approximately 500 beloved acres in the Granite Dells as public open space in exchange for the tremendously valuable benefits of annexation.

If you observe politics the way I do – as one stares at a five-car pileup on the freeway – your gaping will always be rewarded.

Around the middle of October, my wife received a letter from Hisashi Shibata.

Centuries ago, the tribes of Israel were exiled to Babylon, unwillingly but firmly under the domination of a foreign empire.

The entertainment world has offered us an endless selection of singers over the years, but few have endured like the young fellow from Tupelo, Mississippi, who blended country, blues and rock ‘n roll genres into his own unique brand of music.

There are basically two types of people in the Quad Cities area, those that are on city or town water and those that are have wells.

That special section that the Courier published on November 11 in which veterans responded to an invitation that the paper had extended for them to describe their military experience was, in a word, outstanding.

Dear Speaker Pelosi: It’s with a heavy heart that I write to you based on your reluctance to embrace impeachment proceedings against President Trump, as his actions tear at the very heart of our nation’s constitutional fabric.

It is Democratic opposition leaders who are frantically searching for an individual they can persuade to enter the contest, pledging money, organization, unity and an unobstructed path to the party nomination.

This past week in Prescott saw the beginning of winter temperatures.

As the colors of the leaves begin to change and fall all around Prescott, we begin feeling the holiday season coming on quickly.

Hard working, team building, disciplined, dedicated, goal oriented and driven to lead are all characteristics we have come to know from veterans of our military services.

When I hear the word “lynch,” I immediately think of the black experience of torture, persecution and dehumanization that was so prevalent in the first half of the last century in the American south.

There are six to 10 million species of insects in the world with another seven-

Whether you’re Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian or a Green party member, 2020 is shaping up to be an important year.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, “he said, she said,” is quickly becoming, “she said, he cringed and remained silent.” Another variation is, “she said, he apologized profusely and then resigned.”

Sure, I could write about impeachment again this week, and probably for countless weeks to come.

All of Washington is vibrating like the foam on a latte in the cup holder of a convertible jeep riding railroad tracks over a bridge.

Until a few days ago, the only ‘Epstein’ in the news that I knew about was Jeffrey Epstein.

Let me explain in simple terms why the City of Prescott’s proposed new water policy is a sham.

I recently read an article whose author was convinced a certain event was inevitable. T

I never met my great-grandfather, although I’ve seen pictures of him.

Peter was up before anyone else — as he often is.

We live in seemingly divisive times. Politicians are at each other’s throats. Talking heads on the network news explain to us all the reasons we should hate and mistrust each other. Confidence in public institutions is at an all-time low. There seems to be nothing but bad news.

In case you haven’t heard, our lawmakers have returned from their six-week, summer sabbatical, ready to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.

The City of Prescott has spent the summer discussing complex municipal water policy that ensures long-term viability of our city’s water supply.

“I wanna be Bobby’s girl. I wanna be Bobby’s girl. That’s the most important thing to me.” - as sung by Marcie Blane in 1962.

New water policies proposed by the City of Prescott leadership will speed growth, provide water outside of the city without annexation, and increase the overdraft. These new policies depend on “paper water” created by diverting the Groundwater Allowance to new development.

Considering my past is something I do less and less these days.

Nobody was using the old wren house. My grandfather built it. Grandpa started building birdhouses when he retired from milking cows and his second oldest son took over.

My wife and I developed a habit several years ago of reading before we drop off to sleep each night.

Do you long for the days when the only outbursts our delicate ears had to worry about were the Z word (“Zoinks!”) and the J word (“Jinkies!”)?

The results of the municipal election should have been a wake-up call for the Prescott mayor and council. Instead Greg Mengarelli, Billie Orr and others are using the results and the winning tactic (single-shot for Cathey Rusing) to excuse their comparatively poor showings.

Last week, I got an email from my friend Chris Casazza, a partner with the immigration firm Solow, Isbell and Palladino in Philadelphia. He reached out to tell me about something that had happened to a former client, and he hoped that I could tell the story.

He was hit hard enough to lacerate his kidney. He woke up the next day urinating blood. That’s neither a common experience nor an occupational hazard for most of us. It is if you play professional football.

For the past dozen summers, my family has made the drive of nine or more hours (depending on the number of putrid gas station restrooms we visit) from East Texas to Orange Beach, Alabama.

You’ve probably noticed lately that the horizon behind Thumb Butte and Granite Mountain has been smudged with smoke, the visible evidence of still smoldering fires in the area.

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was caught in a video screaming expletives when someone made the mistake of calling him “Fredo,” referring to the fictional character Fredo Corleone from “The Godfather films.”

On a Sunday afternoon fishing trip with my little brother and late father, I caught 15 fish at the lake in Lewisburg, Tennessee.

“The issue is patents,” Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman explained when asked in 2004 why he opposed drug reimportation, the practice of bring back prescription drugs originally manufactured in the U.S. and exported to other countries to sale.

“Fredo has a good heart but he is weak...and stupid.” - Michael Corleone.

“Took away our native tongue/And taught their English to our young...” - from “Indian Reservation,” by John D. Loudermilk.

What is the difference between “yard art” and junk? This question has pitted neighbor against neighbor and has evidently caused quite a few heated debates.

In every election campaign, there comes a point when cruel reality intrudes, forcing candidate and staff to confront the growing likelihood that victory is out of reach and further expenditure of time, money and dedication to a cause is futile.

Becoming a fireman, police officer, pilot, or joining the military is often a dream of so many young boys and girls. While many of my friends went through the stages of following their dreams to become a police officer or firefighter, I found my passion of flying airplanes – and it took off.

If the circumstances weren’t so awful, the predictability of the response would almost be laughable.

It’s been a week since 31 people were murdered in two mass shootings within 24 hours. Despite numerous differences between the two horrific incidents in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, there was a crucial common denominator: hysterical public reaction.

You’ve probably heard the parable of the good dog and the bad dog. Some attribute it to Lakota leader Sitting Bull, some to a Cherokee traditional tale.

For various reasons, my graduating class has seen two milestone anniversaries sail by without a class reunion materializing.

I’m a big softie when it comes to children’s books.

Can we all agree that being human means, among other things, that we are flawed individuals?

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.