Opinion

News reporters tend to mingle with a wider variety of people than those in most other professions. I happen to know this because for 15 years before Mark Twain tapped me on the shoulder, I was a radio reporter, a malnourished profession at the time that I might have killed-off single-handedly.

Dateline, September, 2022: “Seventy-three-year-old Man Lands First Job - King of England.”

So, what do kings do, anyways? Well, we get an idea about what kings do in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, when Huck and Jim are floating down the Mississippi on their raft.

Carson City are you tired of seeing our sagebrush decorated with plastic bags? I am!

It’s unimaginable to me that the United States uses 12 million barrels of oil every year to produce the 100 billion plastics bags we use in the United States every year.

I agree wholeheartedly with current complaints about smow removal/abatement in Carson City.

The ordinances are apparently not being enforced.I know this the Wild West but come on man. The city needs to enforce these ordinances on clearing sidewalks.I am originally from Green Bay Wisconsin, and if you do not get your sidewalk sholved whether business or private the city would clear it for you at like 1 a foot.

How many pedestrians must get injured or killed while walking the sidewalks here in Carson City? How many pedestrians will receive tickets for walking around the snow piles blocking sidewalks due to business allowing their contractors to do so? Lets look at the Carson City Ordinance first.

Mercury is in retrograde and will remain in retrograde until the 18th of January. So what does that mean? Well, three times a year, the planet Mercury appears to be floating backwards across the heavens. This mirage carries with it certain superstitions and suppositions that the same thing could be happening to your life, you could be living your life backwards.

Aunt Hazel asked me when I was two years old, “What do you want to be when you grow up, Honey?”

Without a moment’s hesitation I answered, “When I grow up I’m going to be a snowplow driver.”

Yes, everybody has a funny bone, and it’s the only bone in our body that gives us a longer life. Levity is a healer, and an essential melody of human conversation. In fact, if conversation is music, humor is its jazz.

Imagine the musical score that is the Looney Tunes bed for Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner, “Beep Beep!” By the way, Chuck Jones got his idea for that comic series from Mark Twain’s description of the Coyote and the Jackass Rabbit in his book, Roughing It.

This is the hardiest lot the world has ever seen. They are the whole-hearted few that see winter through up on the Comstock Lode. They are the squirrels that wear dusters. They make their money in the summer, then squirrel it away to see them through the long Comstock cold.

A multi-faith coalition of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish leaders is urging the nation’s largest coffeehouse chains to immediately stop charging extra for plant-based milk alternatives; calling it “unethical” and “unfair”.

Coffeehouse chains like Starbucks, Dunkin’, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Caribou, Dutch Bros, Biggby, Peet's, Human Bean, PJ's, etc., roughly charge on an average about 70¢ extra per cup when customer opts for plant-based milk-alternatives made of oat, soy, almond, coconut; in place of milk in their drinks.

It’s that time of year, the Carson City Assessors Office has mailed out the 2023 Tax Assessment Roll. Did you notice a big increase? The Assessors Office has been in the process of reappraising the city. This includes the use of high resolution aerial photography.

I was whistling, “Born to Lose,” while waiting to get my booster shot, and overheard a young passerby ask his mother, “Mom, why is that man whistling?”

One dazzling Tahoe day not long ago, my gaze fell upon a buttermilk sky, and suddenly, unexpectedly, I perceived time and space mutually, as one. I conjoined with those perfect balls of cotton and my body shook with awe. Wow!
My first thought was, “I’m going to take another run at Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.”

Should Herschel Walker win his Georgia U.S. Senate race Tuesday - it will be due to Governor Kemp's ground game. Couple that with Kemp defeating Trump's handpicked Spring '22 gubernatorial opponent, former U.S. Senator David Perdue, losing
by 50 points from Georgia primary nominating Republicans - Kemp could well been seen - more and more nationally, as the Republican who did the ultimate Trump checkmate, finally!

If so, could Kemp become the "traditional party renaissance" so critically needed for Republicans, rather than DeSantis and many other wannabes?

I’ll never forget the day Mrs. McQuitty appeared in our driveway. She climbed out of an old white Ford, and I’ve never liked Fords since. It was a Monday, and I’ve never liked Mondays since. I didn’t want to take piano lessons, but my parents made me. At 10 years old, all I wanted to do was to go swimming, and besides, piano lessons were for girls.

In full disclosure, I am a terrible cook, no, I am the worst cook in the western hemisphere. When I am left in charge of dinner, guests leave Layne Haven feeling confused and disoriented for several days. However, sometimes I forget how horrible a cook I am, and impulsively invite folks over to Twain Haven for one thing or another, and oh, dinner.

On the 30th of November I will be celebrating Mark Twain’s 187 birthday by observing some of the secrets to his longevity, a few of which we can share here.

Back in July Vladimir Putin quoted and credited Mark Twain. At the time, I suspected he was reaching out, maybe not with an olive branch, but maybe with a twig. He said, “To quote Mark Twain, ‘The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’” I was wrong.

I have a good friend whose wife puts a jar out whenever I visit, and makes us deposit a dollar into that jar every time we use a profane word to color our conversation. So I always stock up on dollar bills before visiting.

Back in my twentieth year, I don’t suppose I ever gazed at anything for longer than two seconds at a time, unless it might be a lady. Nowadays, sunlight dancing on the surface of the lake can suspend me in awe for several minutes at a time.

It’s been said countless times that elections are important, but this November it’s imperative that you vote to save our country.

These past two years have seen America go from greatness, with high employment numbers, low gas and grocery prices, secure borders, no wars, a strong military, no dependence on foreign oil, tremendous growth in domestic manufacturing, and a thriving stock market with everyone’s retirement investments doing well.

The warring instinct is man’s worst impulse. We eat, drink, and copulate with discrimination, then make war with impunity. There’s a breed of ants that acts out in the same way, and because of their predatory foraging, they are appropriately called, “Army Ants.”

Generosity will soon become coin of the realm in the saving of our planet, and it will come in the prototype of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who recently announced he and his family are giving away their $3 billion outdoor-apparel company to fight climate change. Oh, and to make this magnanimous contribution to our society, Chouinard will also pay $17 million in taxes.

A good friend drove an hour to have lunch with me in my kitchen. I can’t speak for him, but I’ve been in a good mood since. There are some health-giving qualities about one-on-one conversations that elevate them to the realm of tonics. Think back to how fun it was to talk to a friend as a child with two cans and a string.

Why am I so in love with the 19th century? I get asked that a lot. And the answer is so simple. I’m in love with the 19th century because the 19th century was pretty much eye-to-eye, and there’s nothing like looking into a person’s eye to gauge the veracity of a person’s word.

Benevolent as Queen Elizabeth was as a monarch, she could have been even more useful, and eminently more noble if she had been a schoolteacher. Unfortunately, for every Queen Elizabeth there is a Henry VIII in the closet.

Lucretia Fudge was the Wailuku Librarian, and I ask you, what better name could a librarian possibly have? She was, as are all good librarians, rather stern.

It was only a photograph, yet it pulled on my heart strings. It was a photo of soccer fans celebrating a win by dancing gleefully in a London street fountain, a scene of unbridled merriment to make any heart sing. Glancing at that picture for five seconds put five days on my already long life.

In his 1870 essay, “The Curious Republic of Gondour,” our mutual friend, Mark Twain, recommends a unique advancement to our present system of democratic suffrage. Twain actually expands upon the voting procedure we will be working with this November, a system that is propped-up on vast numbers of the undereducated to vote, and vast numbers the ultra-wealthy to donate.

Wait!!! Yes, Markleeville and area is beautiful, yes they have great people, yes the fishing around there is fantastic and yes it is a fantastic place to visit, fish, hike and explore and yes there is a great barbecue place there and great little market and stores...but truly you don't wanna go there!!!! It's MINE!!!! Been going there for over 30 years and I don't want you all to ruin it!!!! Well, if you go there you won't ruin it, but you might catch a fish of mine or two. Okay, then, go and enjoy! And take the kids.

Bill Karr,
Placerville