Wading In

Kelvin Wade:Crime has long-term effects | | November 28, 2007 23:06 I'd planned to write about the good news that apparently our Wal-Mart Supercenter could proceed without further delay. But I'm not feeling joyous right now. Tuesday night, my girlfriend's daughter Sheryl and granddaughter Lauryn were leaving a dance studio in Sacramento. They dance for a hula halau, performing at events all over Northern California including the Pacific Rim Festival. They and about three members of their troupe were robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot by two thugs. Sheryl originally thought it was a joke until one of the assailants put a silver revolver in her face. We talk about crime all the time in this community. We base elections on the topic. We come up with strategies to combat it. When it happens to someone you love, statistics and probabilities don't mean much. I told the story in a column years ago about some punks who were playing road rage games with m...

Originally published 11-22-07 Don't mess with tradition By Kelvin Wade | | November 22, 2007 00:40 Ian Thompson wrote an interesting story on vegetarians and Thanksgiving this week. Vegetarians are sparing turkeys and having alternative dishes this Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, my brothers and I will be dispatching no less than three of the 40 million turkeys that will be consumed this year. Turkey, resting on its back, all succulent and golden brown, is a tradition. The sacrifice of the turkey has been bringing families together for generations in this country. Who am I to mess with tradition? Some say the holiday is about family and not the carcass on the table. Wrong. It's about family surrounding a carcass on the table. I always hate when the vegans trot out the old, 'turkeys are abused' canard every year. I'll grant them that they're not the brightest animals on the planet, getting fattened up and not noticing as the flock gets smaller and smaller a...

Originally Published 11-16-07 Making the Web Even Better by Kelvin Wade I love the internet. I once had my home service go down for over a week and life as I knew it came to a standstill. I couldn’t dress in the mornings because I didn’t know what the weather would be like. I had to look at my cell phone to see what time it was, actually watch CNN instead of read the website and text people instead of email. I know. Some people have real problems. I belong to a political email discussion group. We discuss national and international political issues, threaten the President and then send carefully worded emails disassociating ourselves from our intemperate colleagues. And because so many of the members are Canadians, I’m the conservative of the group. And now for some shameless promotion: The Daily Republic website has underwent quite the metamorphosis recently with easy to find stories, better updates and our active blogging community. I’ll dare to say things there that I co...

My brother Tony and I have started a new blog called "Wading In" that covers books, DVDs, movies, music and whatever. It's for the Daily Republic's website. Check it out. And don't be afraid to leave comments. If you leave a comment, it will help us with the editor. You can be anonymous if you want. Let us know what you think. CLICK HERE FOR WADING IN.

Printed on Thursday, November 8, 2007 Garcia's Unlikely Ascension By Kelvin Wade How can you not be happy that 21 year old Matt Garcia laid the smackdown to both newcomers and veteran politicians alike on Tuesday to capture a City Council seat? In Garcia, Fairfield has the youngest elected official in the state of California. Kudos also to Chuck Timm, who ran a solid campaign. From the moment he announced, with his resume’, his fundraising ability, the support of the Police Officers Association, I knew he’d take a seat on the Council. When he came under attack for raising large sums of money I knew it wouldn’t stop him because it came down to a question of integrity and charges of impropriety were never going to stick to Chuck Timm. It was a nail biter of a night when the election returns started coming in. When the absentee ballots came in strong for Garcia, you could feel the winds of change in the air. Absentee voters usually skew older so that was a very...

Kelvin Wade: Do mailers really work in races? By Kelvin Wade | | October 31, 2007 16:48 With the furor over local political mailers and hit pieces, the thing that keeps going through my mind is who is reading political mailers? Political mailers are like the original spam. It's the eight-track of spam and it's amazing we still have to deal with it in 2007. I'm thinking about hooking up a crosscut shredder underneath my mailbox so the mailman can just feed them right in there. Have you been to the post office this time of year? The waste cans inside are usually overflowing with political mailers as people fish the offending colorful leaflets from their P.O. boxes and circular file them en masse. So why would anyone get their information from a mailer? My girlfriend and I went on a lovely five-day cruise to Mexico last week. Before I booked it, do you think I just took the cruise line's word on what it would be like? Do you think I received an adverti...