Let's get this out of the way right at the start. Yes, new Turlock City Manager Roy Wasden will be making just over $202,000 in base salary during his first year on the job. Ignoring taxes and required benefit contributions, that's enough for Wasden to purchase a beautiful new 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom, 1,500 square foot cul-de-sac home in Turlock with just one year of pay. Yes, Wasden will be receiving a $500 a month ...
By now you might have seen my name in a few bylines in the Turlock Journal. I am the new education reporter, and I started the day after Memorial Day. I came in on that first day expecting to sign a stack of papers, fill out my W4 form and be in and out in about an hour. Boy was I wrong.
As the daughter of a farmer, I grew up with a love of the land and a deep respect for nature - you might say a native understanding that every day was Earth Day. My father worked the land. He took care of it and it took care of us, as well as many other people consuming what our farm produced. As California's secretary of agriculture, I welcome the attention that the annual observance of ...
Go ahead, trash California.
California high-speed rail is primarily about bringing two points together - downtown Los Angeles and downtown San Francisco.
Spring has always been a time of change - in weather, the end of daylight savings, and the blooming orchards that line the Valley. This year spring has also brought changes here at the Journal.
Lin-sanity may be ebbing, but a fundamental issue it raised is still on the rise.
The ongoing debate about how to preserve farmland along with the economic base and food resources that agriculture creates for this county, as well as the nation, is healthy and necessary. However, I feel that the debate needs to occur within a much larger framework.
About 10,000 years ago Earth's climate lurched from bitter Ice Age conditions to the much balmier time in which we live today. We don't fully understand what caused that great climate shift, but we know it was near the time of that great temperature transition that people started to farm. And one of the crops people in some parts of the world learned to tend was wheat.
If you are reading this column, then I did not win the lottery. I wrote this on Friday afternoon, when lotto fever was still high and we all had hopes of winning $640 million dollars. I have to admit that I was not immune to that fever myself. I bought several tickets for myself, and I'm part of an office pool of 12 people. I prepared this letter in the unlikely, but unfortunate ...
America is blessed with the strongest and most capable military in the world. Our service members execute challenging missions in the most complex environment on earth. They leave the military with skills that our economy needs to compete. It is our responsibility to take care of them when they return. Unfortunately, upon returning home, many of our veterans discover that even though they have the training to perform a wide variety of jobs, the system ...
I remember growing up in the 1980s and having my elders say things like, "Kids nowadays don't care about anything." After commenting on the apparent apathy of my peers, I would then be treated to a detailed recounting of epic protests against the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation and segregation that took place in the 1960s and 70s. Maybe America just needed a 30-year hiatus to perfect its chanting and sign painting, because the ...
Leave it to the federal government to screw up something that wasn't that hard to fix - if indeed it needed fixing.
I remember it well. It was January 2008, and while there was a chill in the winter air outside, the atmosphere at Two Guy's Catering was electric.
Most local individuals would be far from alarmed to learn that a Maine woman recently announced her decision not to run for a fourth term as senator. In fact, there are few folks who devote enough attention to remember the names and term numbers of local politicians, let alone ones coming from the opposite end of the nation. However, it is not former Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe's leave of politics, but rather her reason ...
I am always amazed at how once a year, that perfect day arrives in the spring that finds the Valley trees all in bloom, the sun is warm and the air is so aromatic you cannot help but say "Wow." My perfect day was over the weekend when driving about on Sunday I happened to find myself among several orchards lined one after another with beautiful pink and white blossoms. The warm 75 ...
It seems like you go along in your everyday life working, sleeping, and playing a little when there's time and energy. Then something happens that changes everything. On Feb. 16 I became a grandma. I've known for the past seven months that this day would come and I was attempting to prepare for it. But there was nothing that could prepare me for the joy in watching my little girl become a ...