By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
This past Fourth of July I had visits from my two youngest sons, both professionals and I listened intently as they talked in a language admittedly I did not understand. It was techno talk and at that moment I realized that even though as an editor decades ago, I had ushered in [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
In my early newspaper days in Los Angeles, I was given an unusual assignment to read the Associated Press, United Press and all the wire services for which my newspaper subscribed in search of oddities in the news. I would compile for a front-page column. It was my editor’s way of lightening [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
It seems of late I have spent more time in a hospital bed waiting for the hours to creep across the face of the clock. For a person as active as I am, the worst part of this ordeal is not the bland hospital menus, not even all the poking around by [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
I am a great fan of the cartoon, Frank & Earnest. The antics of Frank & Earnest are more true to life than perhaps we’d like to admit. However, I think I enjoy the word play in the cartoon more than anything else about these two unlikely characters.
Frank & Earnest, if you [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
If e-mails, letters and personal phone calls are any indication, I am not alone as a dinosaur roaming the jungles of cell phones. To my surprise many others feel as I do that no telephone call is so important it can’t wait.
One of the shocking revelations came from a reader who researched [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
I have a confession to make. I do not own a cell phone.
There are a few of us dinosaurs roaming the earth including, I discovered Edward Grinnan, editor of Guideposts magazine, who made a similar confession in May to his readers. Like, Grinnan, I am not opposed to technology. In fact, I [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
Here I lie, or is it lay? Confound English. But then who hasn’t confused lie and lay?
The last time I wrote this column from this position was two weeks go and I said I’d be out of the hospital in a couple of days. I lied.
There you go again. This lie means [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
I’ve never been much on titles. Occasionally, I’ll slip up and call myself by the prissy word, journalist, but deep down I’m just a reporter. I’ve been higher up in the newspaper ranks, even once was a publisher. And I have held the title of editor on several daily newspapers.
I am told [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
Elderstatesman
I receive too many unwanted forwards on this magic box called a computer. Every now and then one comes through that is a keeper, like the forward called 7% that I got from Charles Becherer, a hospice volunteer with me at the VA in Roseburg. Charlie is the most unassuming individual I [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elder Statesman
It is funny the things you find out about your children after they become adults.
Because, she blogs, I have just now discovered something about my second daughter, Sue. She wrote:
“When I was in grade school, I used to secretly go into my parents’ bedroom and look at their things. I silently [...]
