Columnists

"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," directed by Tomas Alfredson, looks and feels like a movie out of a different era. It is a thoughtful spy thriller with a much slower pace that relies on a musical score to build the momentum rather than bombs or explosions. If the "Mission Impossible" series is at one end of the spy caper spectrum, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is at the other end.

The sun shines 300 days a year. The climate is tropical without the humidity. Descendants of another century were known as "stone-slingers" and cultured black pearls are indigenous to these tropical islands.

In 1977, the South Valley was a much different place: a smaller, less diverse population meant fewer Jews living in Hollister, Gilroy and Morgan Hill. Stuart Blumberg, a Gilroy resident at the time, reflects back on "how alone South County Jews felt, transplanted from elsewhere and seeking spiritual support."

Q: I'm attending group classes to help me stop smoking. We all know that second-hand smoke is harmful to our health. The instructor insists that it also is very unhealthy for pets. Is this true?

The new year is ushering in the good, the bad and the ugly of wine trends. Some of the following will no doubt fall into more than one category.

Medical insurance used to be so simple. Expensive, but simple. We paid bucketloads in monthly premium dollars, and for that I got to go see the doctor where I deposited the "co-pay." How easy was that?

"An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention." - St. Thomas Aquinas

Society and the media lead us to believe that having lots of money and material things is the ticket to happiness. Recent research suggests otherwise.  Let’s look at money as an example.  

While shopping over the holidays, I ran into an old friend. "It's great to see you, but you're literally half the person I remember," I told her. She had dramatically lost weight, having recently undergone a gastric bypass - a stomach stapling surgery performed on obese people to rapidly lose weight.

On Sunday, Jan. 15, Bethany Community Church will host its third annual prayer breakfast honoring the great U.S. civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It will be held at 8:30 a.m. in the Gavilan College Student Union Cafeteria; admission is $25 for adults and $15 for children.