Featured Blogs

Big Box Medicine? Yes!

I’m stuck at the intersection of harried and impatient, CVS pharmacy pick-up.

When a staffer yells, “Consult!”, customers grumble like a time-eating latte request had infiltrated the black coffee line. I smile, bearing witness to what is fast-becoming nostalgia -- actual in-person interplay with a licensed medical professional.

I’m imagining how the pharmacy and its retail personality will morph as big-box and digital behemoths enlarge and repackage their patient pathways and services.

Revivals: My Back Story

Where have all the Promise Keepers gone, especially the 50,000 who filled Fresno’s Bulldog Stadium in 1997?

If you relished profoundly public spiritual revivals, the Nineties were your decade, capped off with a humdinger national event.

October will mark the 25th anniversary of the “Stand in the Gap” rally in which several hundred thousand Christian men engulfed the National Mall in Washington, DC, under the Promise Keepers’ banner.

I'm Buying Into Truth, With Trust & Cash

ST. GEORGE, Utah -- I start with coffee, Cheerios and “the news.”

I transact with nine paid news sources daily. Most subscriptions are as satisfying as a stack of dirty dishes. I’m so hungry for a news relationship that I stop everything and beam when NBC newscaster José Díaz-Balart signs off with, “Thank you for the privilege of your time.”

Empowering Yourself for a Hospital Visit

I kick into self-defense when I walk into a hospital. It starts with homework done long before my head is gridlocked by worry, basic research everyone should do.

The pandemic is a pointed reminder that we invest more thought in buying hair color than knowing where’s the nearest trauma center. Or why that should even matter.

Taking the initiative -- and the blows that come with it

St. George, Utah — I moved here last year admiring the pluck of grass-roots Utahns for securing statewide votes on expanding Medicaid and legalizing medical marijuana.

They dared. I voted with them. And I’ve quickly realized that Utah legislators engage with their citizens the way a jumping cactus regards a curious dog’s nose. Stray from tradition’s path and they’ll stick you — repeatedly.

The many lives of newspaper dating ads

Before eHarmony and Ashley Madison, there were words-only newspaper dating ads, resembling agate listings of losing baseball teams.

The Fresno Bee rolled out its version in the early 1990s. Time heals, so I stand now to offer the Bee public forgiveness for a misdeed.

The Navy's vital, aging "bus"

Our seats faced backward, adding disorientation atop dread.  We were buckled into what proved to be a reliable rattling relic. The C-2 Greyhound ferried us sweating rookies from Coronado Naval Air Station to the floating high-tech projection of power called the USS Abraham Lincoln.

It was like riding a reeking dinosaur to a tightly orchestrated yet lurching dance floor of jet landings and launches.

Telling a doctor 'no' -- A healthy option

No, you can’t autopsy my father. When I was 19, saying no to a physician was like cursing at a priest.

I mustered the answer because it carried certainty – funeral then burial then true mourning. Years later, I grasped deeper consequences – Dad becoming body, then cancer specimen, then data blocks and, overriding all, an autopsy delaying everyone getting on with their lives.