I now see a faint flicker of hope that Nacimiento Lake could escape being overrun with quagga or zebra mussels. But there’s still grave danger that an uninformed lake visitor might launch a boat contaminated with those tiny, foreign shellfish.

I am humbler this year than I was last year because my tomato vines this year have blight.

The words “health care rationing” popped into my mind Wednesday after I read a Tribune headline that said, “Specialty health care funds cut.”

A costly menace now threatens the 80-percent-complete Nacimiento pipeline project. It isn’t the menace of lawsuits by disgruntled water-bill payers. It’s the menace of damage by shellfish the size of pats of butter.

This week our county Health Commission endorsed the single-payer health insurance proposal. “Single-payer” is a less-controversial name for government health insurance.

You probably already know more details about our county government soap opera than you wanted to. No doubt, you read about the investigation that brought on the firing of our assistant county administrator.

I was saddened Tuesday by a letter received by my wife, Mamie, from the League of Women Voters of the United States.

A boy named Daniel Blackburn Frost once lived in Altadena. He was 6 when he visited Paso Robles in 1955 for Pioneer Day and shook hands with that year’s Pioneer Day Marshal, Fred Blackburn.

Did you feel that earthquake at 5:33 a.m. June 20?

During the past five and a half years, my hometown, Paso Robles, has moved in a northwesterly direction, compared to most of the rest of North America. We moved about 9.25 inches. Other land in this county is also shifting.