Running was my religion 30 years ago, and I went to church a lot. Once I put in 150 days without missing a run. At my obsession’s peak, I’d log 70 miles a week, pounding pavement in rain, wind and searing heat. I was a regular at Columbia’s 10,000-meter Old Mill Run, whose starting gun
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“It doesn’t exactly roll off your tongue.” So said one critic when the Tuolumne County staff in November suggested naming a short road leading to the new Law and Justice Center site “Justice Center Drive.” County supervisors delayed their decision for a month, professing to be open to more engaging, mellifluous suggestions from the public.
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I’m having trouble getting started. “Give me a snappy lead,” my editors have urged for years. “Your first sentence should yank the reader right into the story.” But when that story is your own obituary, coming up with that clever, catchy, come-hither opening line is daunting. On the plus side, I’m working with what we
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“Burger Bash” screamed the banner in front of Sonora’s Perko’s restaurant. The new McDonald’s at Standard suddenly doubled the Tuolumne County availability of Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese (750 calories before you get to the XXL fries and the two-gallon Coke). Then Jimmy Buffett’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise” blared over an oldies station: “I like mine
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Summer heat puts the pastoral foothills under constant threat. Experts offer tips on protecting life and property when flames advance.

I began to get the question as soon as I turned 65: “What’s on your bucket list?” Life expectancy tables say I have less than two decades left before I shuffle off. So friends are wondering whether I want to skydive, cliff dive, scuba dive or dive headlong into any other death-defying, irrational pursuits befitting
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