Shelton-Mason County Journal - Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886

“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...

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...

“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...

I’m not a violent person. I’m a flighter, not a fighter. I don’t like to be intimately involved in the slaying of anything, even vermin in our home. I’ll escort spiders and moths to the door....

"Summer, summer, summer, It's like a merry-go-round - Magic." -The Cars Summer is the season we residents west of the Cascades have earned. Winter is the slog. Summer is the song. The sun shines and...

I spent the summer of my 19th year working outside the northern Washington town of Republic on a cattle and alfalfa ranch along the Sanpoil River, a river that drains into the Columbia. It was there...

Kangaroo Court and Star Court would be good road names in a housing development. Here are other possibilities: Hula Loop, Hard Road, Rue Avenue, Lame Lane, Broken Dreams Boulevard, No Way, Miss Place...

Every couple of months, I go to the Bloodworks Northwest office in Olympia to get a vein tapped. I enjoy these visits. I get to check the “no” box to the extensive list of circumstances that can...

I worked for a state representative at the Capitol in Olympia for three months during the 1988 legislative session. I sat at a desk, behind a plastic rectangle that displayed my name. I smiled when...

If you could have four dead people of historical importance to dinner, who would you invite? The rules are they wouldn’t be dead at dinner, you can’t invite Hitler (who wants to hear...

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from a Journal reader inviting me to join some people who play pingpong Wednesday nights at Little Skookum Hall Community Club. This is one of the fringe benefits...

No matter how attuned you are to the news these days, you can always find a story or two each week that stretches your sense of what’s possible in this world. Feast on these three stories: Story...

When people remark about how amazing our modern technology is — sometimes after discovering something else their cellphones can do — I wonder what time in human history they’re comparing “mode...

Several years ago, I often played racquetball with a fellow who would attack himself. When this fellow would make a bad shot, he’d yell something like “Nate, you idiot!” or “You’re stupid!...

Was it Bruce Jenner or Caitlyn Jenner who won the decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics? You can’t really be a lifelong resident of a place until you die there. Here’s a trait of some recently...

Way back in the 20th century, those of us in Mrs. Jannsen’s 12th-grade English class at Mead High School in Spokane County had to read the novel “Fathers and Sons.” Ivan Turgenev, a Russian,...

What do you remember of the news from the last week of February and the first day of March 2020? If you’re normal, not much. So let’s leave 2022 for a moment and refresh our memories. Let’s fall...

When you’re cleaning the fridge and you can’t identify a substance, toss it. If anyone complains, say you ate it. Never comment on a woman’s pregnancy unless you have indisputable confirmation t...

My brain summons images of people when I read or hear particular words. Maybe this happens to you too. The word “accommodate” conjures a millisecond image of Dan Shaw, former city editor for the...

The Olympics opening ceremony starts Friday at 3:30 a.m. That’s the middle of the night for most of us, including me. Still, I’m getting up to watch this one so I can see members of a particular t...

Figurative language confounds children. The first time I heard “Put some elbow grease into it,” I imagined it came in a can, like 3-In-One oil. I checked the cupboard. We were out. In the...

Once upon a time, two aardvarks named Donny and Danny lived and hunted in the scrubland of their native territory. They were the best of friends, sharing their food and happiness equally. Sometimes th...

This is the second time I’ve written the headline “The night of breaking trees” for a newspaper. The first was for a story in The Olympian about an ice storm that hit in the final week of 1996....

Imagine this: You’re expecting a lot of people for dinner. They show up around 5 p.m. and assemble beneath the covering over your front porch before entering your place. Now, imagine discovering...

The difference between breakfast and brunch is you can order alcohol at brunch and not be considered an alcoholic. But if you order alcohol at breakfast, people will talk. We need more people who are...