Columnists

By Gayle Strickland

For an evening of excellent drama with performances you won't soon forget, a trip to Mountain View will be well worth your time. Robert Kelly directs this time-traveling play to ultimate heights with a cast that delivers the utmost possible in the field of theatre. William Liberatore at the grand piano interjecting the well-played, well-timed music of Beethoven is the bond that moves this piece.

Referring to the words of Jesus (“I was in prison and you visited me”), Pulitzer Prize winning author Jack Miles comments that prisoners have a special place in the Christian imagination because Jesus himself was a prisoner.

When I was an 8th grader at Britton Middle School, I joined the debate team.  Back then there was an annual competition against Murphy Middle School and that year we debated the death penalty.

What do you think about numbers? I’m fascinated by them. I know people who have no appreciation for numbers, at all.

The strangest of all this fall’s intense initiative battles may be the small-money one being waged over Proposition 31, whose innocuous title (“State Budget. State and Local Government. Initiative constitutional amendment and statute”) gives only a faint clue as to what it’s about.

When a client complains about paying taxes, I gently remind them that it is a good problem, considering the alternative. While wealth comes in many forms, for the purposes of this column we are talking about financial wealth.

‘Memphis’: Tremendous Performances

You and your pets share infections. You’ve heard this before, but now there’s new evidence that makes it even more significant. For example, humans aren’t the only ones who will be infected by the flu virus this coming season. Studies have shown that cats and dogs often carry flu viruses. We’ve known for some time that kitty-cats could be carriers. But research in 2000 implicated dogs as well. And the numbers of infected pets is really surprising. A recent Ohio study of feline blood samples found that almost a third of cats had been infected with seasonal flu, and one in five had been infected with the H1N1 flu strain that caused so much concern in 2009.