On Sunday, February 21, I "endured" my birthday. At age 81 you don't "enjoy" birthdays except perhaps from a feeling of gratitude at being alive. As I have said to others, it's a little like waking up that morning and discovering you have been trapped in the body of an 81-year-old. You don't fully get used to the idea that you are aging in your mind until physical ailments remind you. The next day, on Monday, we flew to Kona on…
When Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R – KY) within hours of Justice Scalia's death declared that the Senate would not even hold hearings on any replacement proposed by the president no matter what the Constitution provides, it wasn't all that surprising. This party has deteriorated from the days when it put public good before political self-interest to the point of chaos and internal dissension we find it in today. When the party, for political self-interest, took under its wing tea party…
My maternal grandfather Peter (Petar) Babarovich was born April 12, 1861 in the village of Splitska on the island of Brac in the Adriatic Sea. He died in Anacortes, Washington March 5, 1935. I was born 12 days after he died. It must have have been a very difficult time for my mother, to lose her father and then give birth to me. He and my grandmother had seven children all of whom, except my mother, Mary, who was born in Anacortes,…
Famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow once said: "I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure." I confess that was my first thought when I learned of the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia. Or, as the comedian George Jessel once said about the people attending the funeral of a celebrity he didn't like: "you see, give the people what they want and they will come." From my perspective here…
When I was growing up our family lived in Anacortes, Washington at 2102 9th Street. Our house was a two story house on a triangle shaped lot located on a high bank looking out over Guemes Channel below. To the left of the property, on Guemes Channel was the Sebastian Stuart Cannery. A wonderful, old, red painted structure on pilling which extended out into the channel. But, to to be perfectly accurate my earliest memories of where we lived was…
