I’ve told you many stories from my years publishing small town newspapers on the Pacific Northwest coast and in Arizona, but there are other stories that remain untold for one reason or another. Here is one that was a long time coming. Whether you are a healthcare worker, a first responder, a schoolteacher, or a […]
Except for dealing with Hurricane Nicole, pretty much all I’ve done for the last week is read through and make corrections to several chapters of my new Big Lake book. That’s an awful lot of words and I still have more to go, I think one or two more chapters before I print them out […]
I have a birthday coming up in the next few weeks, but that’s not the reason for today’s blog title. That birthday happened almost 20 years ago. But I achieved another milestone yesterday when Pucker Factor, the 11th book in my John Lee Quarrels mystery series, went live on Amazon. This is my 50th book, […]
Note: Here is a blog from our days as fulltime RVers, about one of our favorite places on the magnificent Oregon coast. We love wandering around the waterfront in Newport, Oregon. If we ever hang up the keys and decide to settle down in the Pacific Northwest, this would be the place. U.S. Highway 101 […]
Anybody who’s ever had to deal with the public on a daily basis can tell you that some people can be very hard to handle. Whether you’re working behind the counter in a retail store, as a service technician, a nurse, a school teacher, a first responder, or anybody else, believe me, they all have […]
This is our fifth Halloween in our house here in Edgewater, Florida, and every year we buy candy for the trick or treaters. And not once have we had a ghost or goblin or anybody else show up at our door in or out of costume. I think that tradition has pretty much gone by […]
We love getting off the interstate highways and taking the two-lane roads whenever we can. As I have said many times before, a Denny’s or a chain hotel at an interstate exit in Kansas is no different than one in Michigan or California. But the two-lane roads will take you to the real America. Small […]
A longtime reader contacted me yesterday saying they are considering a Thousand Trails campground membership and asking me for my thoughts on the matter. Thousand Trails is like any other membership campground system. If you use it, it can be a good deal, and if you don’t, it’s a waste of time and money. We […]
I’m back with more questions from blog readers about RVing, what’s happening in our lives since we hung up the keys, and all kinds of other things. While I try to answer all questions individually, I also share some here occasionally. Q. We subscribed to your Gypsy Journal until you quit and trust your recommendations. […]
In a previous Newspaper Days blog post titled How I Did It, I shared with you how I started out with one small town weekly newspaper and wound up with seven of them on the Pacific Northwest Coast. Now, let me tell you about how someone I knew managed to fail miserably in the same […]
When we tell people that we were fulltime RVers, one question they frequently ask us is what is our favorite place in the country. That’s like asking a parent which child is their favorite. We have so many “favorites” that I could never choose just one. One winter Terry and I made our first visit […]
In a Newspaper Days blog post last month, I talked about a fellow who got busted for fleeing from the cops and how he proved just how dumb he was when he got to court. Several readers thought that was funny, and someone who watches the TV show Court Cam asked if I had any […]
I have done quite a few things to earn a buck in my life, and some of them have been a bit bizarre while others have been rather mundane. I think the shortest job I ever had was about four hours. Right after I got out of the Army a thousand years ago, I got […]
I’m back with more questions from blog readers about RVing, what’s happening in our lives since we hung up the keys, and all kinds of other things. While I try to answer all questions individually, I also share some here occasionally. Q. We are new fulltimers and want to replace the two recliners in our […]
Back during my newspaper days on the Pacific Northwest coast, my headquarters was in Aberdeen, Washington, in Grays Harbor, which is located at the bottom of the Olympic Peninsula. Aberdeen is an old seaport and lumber mill town, and Gray’s Harbor is the largest natural deep water port north of San Francisco, and there is […]
I don’t know when you will see this blog, since when I logged on at 11:30 last night to get it ready to post, I got a message saying that WordPress was doing some kind of critical update and to try back later. I waited until just before midnight and got the same message. If […]
Definition of potpourri – 1: a mixture of flowers, herbs, and spices that is usually kept in a jar and used for scent. 2: a miscellaneous collection. The second definition above pretty much describes today’s blog, a collection of miscellaneous thoughts and info that I’m sharing because I don’t have anything else to talk about […]
Publishing small-town newspapers on the Pacific Northwest coast and in Arizona was a lot of fun, and I like to think that sometimes my publications made a difference in the communities they served. I gained a reputation for stepping on toes, and that was all right with me because sometimes those toes really needed to […]
Miss Terry and I spent more than 18 years traveling from border to border and sea to shining sea during our life as fulltime RVers, and when it was time to hang up the keys, we bought a house on Florida’s central coast. Why, you ask? What made us decide on Florida over other places […]
It’s been a while since I’ve run a blog featuring some of the questions I receive and my answers to them. While I try to answer all questions individually, from time to time I find some that are worth sharing here. Q. The plan was to go to Alaska this summer, and at the last […]