I learned the secret in 1989, while dutifully visiting my parents in Manhattan. Dad, 87, woke up more confused than usual. Mom and I urged him to see his doctor, and he reluctantly agreed. The doctor said to bring him in at once, so I called a taxi. Exam findings were negative. “Go home and […]
Ron Kokish
Posted inColumns
Mature Content: When Jae was shocked (but I was pleased)
Early this summer, respected local Jae Gregory published a Facebook post about her move to Redstone after 28 years in Carbondale. Since her move, she wrote, she suddenly finds Carbondale “a bit shocking.” “I’ve often wondered,” she continued, “why, when a small town is perfect, the developers and off [sic] the council can still take […]
Posted inOpinion
Mature Content: Litze and Yaz
When the German military marched into deeply Catholic Austria onMarch 12, 1938, Austrians overwhelmingly welcomed them. The two governments became one a day later in an action called Anschluss. Richard Kapella, a member of Austria’s Catholic majority, was born to landed gentry at the end of the 19th century. A physician and full colonel in […]
Posted inOpinion
Mature Content: ‘Only in America’
I started writing this column on July 4th, exactly 250 years after our Founders signed America’s Declaration of Independence. The second sentence of that document asserts, among other things, that all men are created equal and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. At the time, it was far from […]
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Indivisible-ish
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This is the pledge we learned in the 1940s, on our first day of kindergarten. The principal’s voice came over the loudspeaker; we were told to […]
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Revolutionary changes
My granddaughter Sara interviewed me for a college assignment. She wanted to know about the revolutionary changes I’ve experienced in my eight and a half decades on earth, things like computers and Artificial Intelligence (AI). At 18, Sara sees change as pretty sudden. At 85, I see it as more gradual, an “evolution” rather than […]
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Mature Content: Travel thoughts
Some people are devout travelers. My friend Harry combined his love of travel with his gift of gab in a career that started as a traveling salesman and turned into life as a Costa Rican citizen and businessman. Zach, a hippy kid, interrupted his education for a year of traveling in India on a shoestring, […]
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Mature Content: ‘All Used Up’
We’re all “aging.” From our neighbor turning 10 to friends turning 80, if you manage to stay alive, aging happens. For a time, that process means gaining abilities. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the gains stabilize. Eventually, they become losses. When 55-year-old Susan moved back to the Valley, and Ron made his Valley debut […]
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Mature Content: ‘Don’t worry about it!’
Editor’s note: Some quotes in this column are paraphrased. Those of us living in America’s moderate- and left-leaning political spaces expected a bad year, and 2025 didn’t disappoint. The Trump-Kennedy Center, Trump-class battleships, masked (secret?) police in unmarked cars abducting our neighbors, the military patrolling city streets, yo-yo tariffs, more mass shootings, the continued dismembering […]
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Mature Content: Joseph and Gerard
George Santayana was right when he wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 1960, my friend John and I drove to Miami for spring break and came home with a tiny alligator we named Gerard Swope. We wanted to be cool. We thought having a pet alligator would make […]