Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
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Have you ever thought about which senses are necessary to do your job? Sound? Sight? Smell? Touch? Taste? Those are the Big Five, the big receptors. They are our connections to the material world. Newspaper journalists rely on sight, mostly. We have to read what’s happening and we have to see what’s happening. If you can’t see, our jobs would be difficult, kind of like making bread without yeast. Our stories would turn out flat. You’ll occasionally read a story in which a reporter shares...
I recently learned a newspaperman, who I knew while he worked for The Associated Press in Olympia, died several years ago. He was 38, had a wife and two kids, ages 3 and 6, so Jonathan Kaminsky’s death met the full measure for being really sad news. A news obituary that ran in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in December 2016 described Jonathan’s end. Here are the opening paragraphs of the story: “At the end of his life, as Jonathan Kaminsky lay in hospice care, he called to his brother, David...
Here’s how we get people to stop using guns to kill people: We work on making people not want to kill people. An example of lazy object naming: The orange. People should use their baby photos in their obits — that’s when they looked their best. We have a lot of public art in Western Washington that depicts salmon, so much so that if anyone is around in 2,000 years to dig through what remains of our civilization, they’ll think we worshiped those swimming creatures. Imagine their shock, then, w...
I opened the entrance door to a restaurant for a woman the other day, which sparked a frayed memory of a time that’s no more. From the early 1970s, when the women’s liberation movement took root, to the mid-1990s, it was possible to hear the following from a woman if a man opened a door for her: “Would you hold the door open if I was a man?” Sometimes the statement was punctuated with the phrase “you male chauvinist pig,” a saying that’s also become a relic. Not all women reacted that way, but...
Seems we’ll have at least one more season of holiday gatherings where talk of politics and social behavior will be discouraged, so here are some jokes from three publications — Good Housekeeping, Esquire and Readers Digest — that you can use to derail any obnoxiously opinioned guests, or to entertain any 10-year-olds. ___________________ A guy spots a sign outside a house that reads “Talking Dog for Sale.” Intrigued, he walks in. “So what have you done with your life?” he asks the dog. “I’ve le...
OCEANSIDE, Calif. — It is good to know there are more of us than there are of them, but enough with this election. Other matters are worth considering in this muddled-up world, including godwits, surfers and Californians, to name just three. Mrs. Ericson and I are on holiday in Southern California, just two near-pensioners looking for warmth. We’ve spent much of our time walking beaches, including the shore along Oceanside in north San Diego County. We like how crashing waves muffle all oth...
Isn’t it odd to tell people who feel achy after getting a COVID vaccination that it shows that the vaccine is working? If that’s true, wouldn’t the contrary be true — if you don’t feel achy after a COVID shot it’s a sign the shot’s not working? Isn’t it also odd that people take the time and effort to mention that they hate being in traffic jams? Are they trying to distinguish themselves from people who do like being in traffic jams? We’d all be happier if everyone else was happier. Nothing...
Here's how you do it: Get up at 5:45 a.m., preferably on a Sunday because traffic is lighter, and start 1 mile south of the state Capitol with your friend, who in my case is John. The two of you leave at 6:20 a.m., while it's still dark. Maybe you point your chin at the sky to see the stars. Maybe the air is fresh and crisp, like an alpine dawn. You walk north on Capitol Way, past the Capitol. That's the first mile and you're OK. The road, neighborhood and all else are silent. The place is dead...
Let’s take a moment for me. This column started on the Journal’s Opinion Page on Oct. 19, 2017 — the column you’re reading is episode No. 261. I’ve gone five years and one week without missing an issue, which isn’t easy during those weeks when you have nothing to say. That comment about having nothing to say is an example of self-deprecation, and I’ve learned over these five years that self-deprecation is a surefire way to win readers. In fact, my self-deprecation skills are superior to j...
Perhaps you’re like me. Stories about well-intentioned people striving to create permanent places for people without adequate shelter have become background noise. These stories of good intentions are swamped by the sights we see along the roads, in parks, in downtowns, in the woods. Easing homelessness often seems like the Dutch boy who has too few fingers trying to plug too many holes in the dike. But eventually homelessness will change, and it’s reasonable to think that because institutions a...
I often feel guilty when I stroll past someone who’s in a wheelchair, maybe because it seems like bragging. Here’s a new, less judgmental phrase for suicide: Self-checkout. The gut gets too much credit for making sound decisions. There are more of us than there are of them. When people decide telling the truth is better than lying, they become their unguarded and grateful selves. Adolf Hitler wouldn’t have looked so evil if we had a picture of him sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner. In the inter...
I was at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting many years ago when a fellow shared a story about baseball and beer. The guy said that before watching a ballgame, he would buy a case of beer (24 containers) and then drink one at the top and one at the bottom of each inning, making for a minimum of 17 beers consumed per ball game. Someone asked what he would do with the extra beers, and the man replied, “In case of extra innings.” When he quit drinking alcohol and tried to watch a baseball game sober, t...
Steve Duenkel must be a happy man today. Duenkel has been running hard for the job of Mason County auditor since filing his candidacy last winter. He's been doing his homework and traveling the expanses of this county, knocking on doors and showing up at community events, where he's raised dark suspicions about the legitimacy of our elections, and about incumbent Mason County Auditor Paddy McGuire ("Why is he in that office? A lot of people are wondering, 'Why is he here?' ") In fact, Duenkel...
The Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes discovered that the volume of displaced water is equal to the volume of the object that’s submerged in the water. He realized that upon easing into his big, fat, Greek tub. It sounds obvious now, but it wasn’t obvious until it was. Archimedes then, according to a Roman author and engineer writing more than 100 years later, ran naked into the streets of Syracuse. If newspapers had existed then, I imagine the headline: “Local famous scientist seen...
Someone should introduce a brand of cigarettes called Moderate. That way, people could call themselves Moderate smokers. People without shelter are called homeless, so people with shelter should be called home-full. Because the term “food allergy” has a negative connotation, I imagine our nation’s word sanitizers are busy dreaming up a bland new phrase for this condition. Here are a couple of ideas to get us started: “Food incompatibility syndrome” or “the nutravergent.” A proposal for...
My paternal grandfather, Eric Ericson, came to this country from Sweden with his parents in the early 1900s, maybe to escape a herring famine or something. We’re not sure why they came, but we do know those Swedes love herring. I know of two jobs my grandfather had. The first was as a teen in Spokane selling shoes in a store. He told me he was fired for telling a woman her feet were larger than the shoe size she insisted she had. He said he walked down the street to the Old National Bank, w...
I was walking alone on a sidewalk in downtown Olympia one evening a couple of weeks ago when a man who looked to be in his 20s approached me. He asked whether I had any “white.” “Huh?” I said. “White,” he said. “White? What’s that?” I asked. “It’s, you know, white.” “Oh. White,” I said, patting my pants pockets. “I don’t have any white.” I called a friend whose job requires spending a lot of time around criminals and he said “white” probably refers to heroin. ■■■ I was at a funeral recent...
Hey, parents of young ones: Would you like your journey through a grocery store with your children to be more harmonious? Would you like a dependable way to short-circuit the circuit in your children’s brains that forces them to badger you until your patience is as worn as a teenager’s favorite shirt? I figured out the grocery store problem when our first child, Alexander, was about 4. The pestering was mounting in relation to his growing command of English, and he would accompany his words wit...
I was busy catching up on infection news the other day at infectioncontroltoday.com when I came across this tidbit: “More than half of all Americans are symptomatic of highly contagious, unsightly and often difficult to cure nail fungus and infections, and may potentially pass them along to others by sharing nail tools, according to a new survey on nail hygiene habits. “According to the Fungicure 2004 Nail Hygiene Survey of 830 Americans fielded by TNS/NFO Research Worldwide, more than 52% of...
Salesman on train: “How far you going, friend?” Harold Hill: “Wherever the people are as green as the money, friend.” — “The Music Man” Writing a newspaper column sometimes requires fishing. You get an idea the fish are biting 20 yards off the point during the outgoing tide, so you go there. You sit in a boat. And you wait. And you wait. I’m no fisherman, but I’ve heard this is how fishing works. My idea was to spend some of primary election day sitting in a camp chair watching the comings and g...
I have an idea for a pledge of allegiance that’s exclusively for Washingtonians: “I pledge fidelity to the flag of the mostly united state of Washington, And to the heavily democratic republic for which it stands. One state directly south of Canada, With wheat, apples and clam cakes for all.” When matters go kerflooey elsewhere in the United States and it seems the downside is on the upswing, we might search for a cubbyhole in our brain where we can wall ourselves off a bit. We’re in for an...
After the man asked his question, some folks snickered. The snickers came from many of the nearly 40 people assembled in the Mason County Commission Chambers last Wednesday for a county-sponsored session titled “Election Observer Training.” The man had asked Marie Stevenson, the county’s election superintendent, whether election workers could get away with, say, dumping ballots in the woods after retrieving them from one of the county’s election drop boxes. She said no and then spoke of the red...
“Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to 9 months. After that, they don’t wanna know about you. They don’t wanna hear from you. No nothing! No neonatal care, no day care, no Head Start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re pre-born, you’re fine, if you’re preschool, you’re f-----.” — George Carlin, “Back in Town” HBO special, 1996. The day after George Carlin died in this month in 2008, the flag at the post office was at half-staff, and...
I don’t own a gun. It would just be one more thing I’d have to clean. The rhododendrons and dogwood trees are in their fullest bloom and the sun is high and bright. What a wonderful day it must be to be a bee! You know why it’s called “kidding?” Because kids kid around. They like a kidder. You need to pick your battles as a parent. Unfortunately, my kid always picked the Battle of Stalingrad. Age is nothing but a number, but it is a number that lets you know you’re that much closer to being de...
“Socks!” I couldn’t remember the woman’s name who was walking toward me last week in the hall of the gym I go to. She worked in a drive-through coffee shop I frequented before the plague started. The shop closed, and I’ve seen her just once since then. As she approached, I couldn’t remember her name, so I settled on trying to get her attention by saying the word “socks” when she was a step or two past me. She kept on. She and I had deal going before the plague. Instead of me giving her a do...
