Dear Kevin Payne — I’m writing this column a week early. By candlelight. Shadows dance eerily on dark walls and I’m composing this missive the old-fashioned way — via pencil.

It’s Christmas Day in Newhall. Elsewheres, I hear as well. I’ve been in homes, sometimes not mine, for 70 years now. I think the first three or four December 25ths,

Seems forever since I’ve dashed off one of these poor excuses for a Christmas present. So much to share about the family up here in the vast high desert wasteland

My niece-like substance, the beautiful and fetching Stefanie, took it upon herself to start a new tradition during this, Our Yuppie Plague. There’s enough family members to fill an Indian

I’m in the midst of an interesting life, filled with luck and adventures, triumphs and a few tragedies, the latter all curiously survivable. I’ve yet to master the fortune thing,

Ah, late November. Winter’s in the air. Families morph into strange creatures, part flesh and blood. Part Zoom. It’s Thanksgiving Weekend and people — alone — will celebrate by sleeping

My heart goes out to The Government. Why? The Government has to deal with The Public, that many-limbed creature with the smallish brain.  My heart goes out to The Public.

Being a small business owner, frequently I deal with distasteful tasks like employee discipline, honesty and motivation. Of course, it’s pretty easy to track who’s screwing up the company. There’s

I’ve oft publicly confessed I’m not a Church Guy. I pray just about every day, sometimes several dozen or hundred times. Hilarious note about that? It’s usually on the just

October is not a hard month for me, more a reflective one. My dad died in October seven years back. Scott Newhall, former swashbuckling editor of this paper, passed as