Barack Obama completes his second term in office in a day or so, and before his record is affected by early decisions by his successor, it’s time to assess the impact of his presidency and what is likely to be his and its legacy.  In doing so, I don’t pretend to offer a historian’s […]

              My wife and I had long wanted to travel “down under,” and so, with our two adult sons joining us, we scheduled ourselves for a ten-day cruise of New Zealand from which we returned just after Christmas.  We had previously taken cruises of the Caribbean Islands, Alaska (the Inland Passage) and Eastern Canada with the […]

            The Academy Award nominations will be announced in less than two weeks, with the actual awards ceremony set for February 26.  Many of the films that are in the running for major nominations (either because of the amount of publicity the studios are generating for them or because of strong critical reviews and insider […]

              While 2016 may have been a less than satisfactory year in some areas for some readers (we’ll leave the political reviews to others), in terms of the performing arts that were available in and around Sacramento, it was first rate.  In fact, trying to pick the ten best performances of the approximately fifty we […]