Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
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I’m taking three weeks off — we’ll run reruns while I’m gone. This one was published in the Shelton-Mason County Journal on Feb. 8, 2024. Fresh, unfocused content returns May 29. “But if Christ hadn’t delivered his Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being. I’d just as soon be a rattlesnake.” — Kurt Vonnegut, “A Man Without a Country” Imagine, if you will … It’s circa 30 A.D. and Jesus Christ is making a name for himself. He’s atop a hill n...
I’m taking three weeks off, mostly to putter around. We’ll run reruns while I’m gone. This one was published in the Shelton-Mason County Journal on Feb. 11, 2021. Fresh, unfocused content will return May 29. On the flip side of a recipe for Peachy Upside Down Cake, cut from the Friday, Feb. 21, 1975, edition of Spokane’s Spokesman-Review, is a three-paragraph Associated Press story with the headline “Sentencing set for Watergate 4.” On the backside of a recipe for Hot Cross Buns, also cut fr...
I’m taking three weeks off, mostly to grow out my fingernails. We’ll run reruns while I’m gone. This is the first column I wrote for the Shelton-Mason Country Journal. It was published Oct. 19, 2017. Hello. My wife, our 13-year-old son and I went to see Spook Handy last week at the Timberland library branch near our home. Spook is a folk singer who played with Pete Seeger, the musician and singing encyclopedia of American song who spent his life traveling this land of ours, singing tunes about...
The organizations created for people who believe bigfoot, aliens and angels are real should form a conglomerate. Imagine the administrative overhead those organizations could eliminate and the economies of scale that would be realized. ■■■ Name of a church garden in Lacey: “The Garden of Weedin’ ” ■■■ Here’s someone you’ll never meet: A 2-year-old with a shady past. ■■■ I’ve squandered every opportunity I was ever given to become a team leader. ■■■ I was talking to a single mother at the hotel w...
The people of Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, which in 1913 covered people from our neck of Western Washington’s woods, elected a fellow to the U.S. House of Representatives that year who would become a supernova in our nation’s political firmament. That Washington resident — who wasn’t born in this state like me, but let’s not hold that against him — helped craft and promote a piece of legislation that makes him seem a thoroughly modern American, now nearly 70 years past his death. U....
A man walks into a restaurant and picks up the menu. When the maître d’ greets him, she asks, “What can I do for you, sir?” “I’m thinking about having chicken,” the man says. “How do you prepare your chickens?” “We don’t do anything special,” the maître d’ says. “We just tell ’em they’re gonna die.” ■■■ I was walking down Fifth Avenue today and I found a wallet, and I was going to keep it, rather than return it, but I thought: Well, if I lost a $150, how would I feel? And I realized I would want...
"I have resided in Shelton since 1976. As a native Mexican and now U.S. citizen, I have made Shelton the home for me and my five children. As an active member with the Hispanic community, I have witnessed an awesome growth in Shelton's Hispanic population. It has always been my dream to open a tortilla factory in Shelton and show members of the community, both Hispanic and non-Hispanic, that the American dream is alive and open to all who are willing to reach for it!" — Maggie Velasco-Lucero, i...
I was walking with my 7-year-old nephew, Mason, when he noticed birds in the sky. “Look at that,” he said. “The birds are flowing like water.” ■■■ Last week, a few hours before the storm that wasn’t was forecast to start pummeling us back to the Stone Age, I was out walking with one of my sons when we approached the pizza place down the block from our home. It was warm out. We saw two girls, maybe 5 years old, one hanging sideways among the branches of a giant rhododendron bush, the other had h...
"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'" — The Bible South Sound, and our Washington, had a remarkable human being pass from these parts last week. Ralph Munro's vessel is gone, but it's a safe bet his vessel's effect will remain active in our people and our land. Munro was Washington's secretary of state for five terms, from 1980 to 2000, and he lived on property along Eld Inlet on Mud Bay in T...
“Spry — able to move quickly, easily, and lightly, used especially to describe an older person.” — Merriam-Webster The woman down the aisle from me was returning from getting more alcohol, so when she reached my seat on the end of our aisle, I hopped up so she’d have space to pass. The woman looked to be in her mid-30s. “Wow,” she said to me, smiling. “You got up quick. You’re spry.” Ahh … the comment I’ve feared and anticipated for more than 15 years had finally came to pass. I had a planned re...
“The desire for a larger bottom is becoming more popular, with the number of so-called Brazilian butt lifts more than doubling in the last five years. However, a recent high-profile case involving a doctor in Miami who was banned from operating after the death of a patient during surgery highlights the risks associated with having this procedure. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the Brazilian butt lift has the highest rate of death of all aesthetic procedures.” — The BBC,...
I was at the new McMenamins in Tacoma when I asked the waiter where she lived. “Milton,” she said. “Actually, it’s kind of Puyallup, too, because the border runs through my apartment building.” She said some people in the complex technically live in Puyallup and some technically live in Milton. I’d never heard of such a thing, so I had more questions, most based on what locale she had the most affinity for. She was going back and forth on which town she liked best, so I said, “OK, OK. If a civi...
“It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worth hearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own business.” — Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president, Republican, millionaire A 1988 cartoon in the New Yorker magazine shows two old, wealthy men in suits sitting in a gentleman’s club. One says to the other: “The poor are getting poorer, but with the rich getting richer it all averages out in the long run.” We’re turning...
Every edition of the Shelton-Mason County Journal dating to 1902 is preserved in hardcover volumes on shelves in the newspaper's back shop on Cota Street. Each thick and weighty collection, most pressed between sturdy, forest-green covers, contains six months of papers. A volume from 1988 was lying the other day on the desk of Dave Pierik, the newpaper's office administrator. I flipped it open and landed on a page 4, where then-publisher and owner Henry Gay's column ran every week. His column...
“If your mom tells you she loves you, check it out.” — A phrase many newspaper journalists have been told I bought some frozen salmon last week from a fishmonger at the fish store. It was coho. While paying, I impressed the guy behind the counter with my extensive knowledge of coho. I told him about the amazing coho run this season in the Salish Fjord, and how the Union River had its best coho numbers in decades. I asked the guy where the coho I was holding came from. I dropped some names of ri...
If you’re looking to experience pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath and sloth, check out the internet. You’ll find a lot of options. ■■■ The color palette for Western Washingtonians’ clothing in winter could be described as “functional drab.” ■■■ If you go on a 10-mile ride on your electric bike, please don’t say you went on a “10-mile bike ride.” You should say, “I went on a 10-mile electric bike ride.” ■■■ It’s amazing people can learn English. Hats off to them. I’ve been speaking English for mo...
English naval Capt. George Vancouver paid these parts a visit for a couple of months in the spring of 1792, and he had a lot to do - chart the depth of waters, survey, chronicle flora and fauna, maybe some rum, sodomy and the lash, and most permanently, slap names on geographical features. "While in Puget Sound, Vancouver named 75 prominent features, from bays to mountains," according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. "Many of these remain to this day, including Admiralty Inlet,...
Last Friday at 8 a.m., the weather station at Sanderson Field outside of Shelton registered 28 degrees. At that precise moment at Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas, the temperature was “about 75 degrees,” according to a phone call I was having with Diane, a longtime friend who reported she was lying on a beach filled with people in sarongs. “The water’s a little cold, but you get used to it,” she said. Imagine the sympathy I was unable to summon. Diane was on Day 14 of a 15-day cruise with her mother...
Kathryn Frey, a resident of Portland, started her presentation at the Shelton library two weeks ago by laying about 20 stones on the table in front of her. The stones were small enough to hold in your palm. She asked the dozen or so people in the audience to come up and grab one. We fetched a rock and returned to our seats. Kathryn asked us to hold our stone, to feel its weight and dimensions, and a silence fell over the room. It's helpful to keep one's mind receptive during moments like this,...
“Freedom of choice is what you got Freedom from choice is what you want.” — “Freedom of Choice,” Devo Imagine being a prehistoric human, sitting around a communal firepit after the dark comes with your closest companion — you know, the person you love so much that you share a nook in the cave with him. It’s just the two of you, settling down after a hard day of milling grain, slaying prey and not getting killed. After you settle in around the fire stones, the conversation turns to what color-pr...
I was 7 or 8 when I first heard a person use the word “decapitate.” I asked what it meant, and the person said it means to have one’s head cut off. I was disturbed, because I didn’t know that level of barbarity could exist in this world. Once I absorbed that news, I wondered why the word “cap” was in “decapitate.” Maybe it was a way to say you’d lose your ability to wear a cap? But why not “dehatitate?” It seemed that all caps were hats, but not all hats were caps ... At that moment, if someo...
I talked to Santa Claus on the telephone Sunday morning. After spending 40 minutes with Santa, I was left with a feeling of joy and optimism, which is always nice. You know what else is nice? Interviewing someone who gives you more usable quotes than you can use. It makes this job so much easier. Bob Partlow is a former newspaperman I worked with at The Olympian. He was the political reporter for the paper, stationed on the Capitol Campus, and I often copy-edited his stories. He quit the paper...
Judy and Rod Whittaker live at the corner of 2nd and Cedar streets in downtown Shelton. But for the past several weeks, they've been residing in Stinktown, USA. Shelton Creek cuts through their property, as it does through several residential properties downtown. More than a month ago, spawned-out summer chum started dying in the creek, raising a stink of such pungency, urgency and endurance that Judy said she would take a big inhale and hold her breath before walking out the door. "I take a...
A good epitaph for a tombstone: “Sorry. I’m late.” ■■■ I was late to an appointment last week because my internet algorithm wasn’t right. It was promoting Grateful Dead songs and videos of people getting hurt on trampolines. I couldn’t let it go — if you don’t stay on top of your algorithm it can lead to worse developments, including songs from Metallica and clips of people being hit by commuter trains. I was late to my appointment, but the person completely understood once I explained why. ...
Kirk Ericson, a columnist with the Shelton Mason-County Journal for the past seven years, has a new book out that contains more than 100 of his favorite columns. “Great Writing!” is his second book, after “Disappointment Awaits,” which came out in 2019. His work runs every week on page 4 of the Journal. Kirk sat down with Kirk earlier this week for a Q&A about his latest book and matters related to producing a weekly newspaper column. Kirk: First of all, Kirk, how tall are you? Kirk: That’s...
