West Coast Observer: Roe v. Wade

By William Silveira

In 1965 the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, which held that the 14th amendment’s due process clause implied a fundamental right to privacy and overturned the Connecticut law. This was the first recognition by the Supreme Court of a constitutional right to privacy. But it has withheld court challenges ever since.

    So, along comes Roe v. Wade in 1973, in which the Supreme Court had to decide whether a woman’s right to privacy is outweighed by the due process clause, which gives an unborn child a right to life. So then, you had all the debate about when an unborn child is viable and deserving of due process protection, and so on.

West Coast Observer: California’s Fishing Problem

By William Silveira

Lynda and Stewart Resnick, the wealthy landowners I mentioned in Friday’s column – the couple who are irrigating desert land in Lost Hills – made the Los Angeles Times yesterday. In an op-ed column entitled “The Fate of the Salmon Is a Grim Indicator of Our Future,” author James Pogue notes that immense power is wielded in Sacramento by large agribusiness interests and their lobbyists. He mentions the Resnicks specifically as “the Beverly Hills-based planter billionaires” and notes that they “have donated more than $350,000 to Governor [Gavin] Newsome since 2018.” The following instructive paragraph immediately follows the mention of the Resnicks:

West Coast Observer: California’s Water Problem

By William Silveira

A friend on the East Coast recently sent me a link to the New York Times article “The Central California Town That Keeps Sinking” [by Lois Henry, May 25]. Its opening sounds a siren:

CORCORAN, Calif. — In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the farming town of Corcoran has a multimillion-dollar problem. It is almost impossible to see, yet so vast it takes NASA scientists using satellite technology to fully grasp.
    Corcoran is sinking.

[You can read the whole article here, after I provide a context for you.]

Correspondence: We didn’t even get a road....

Prisoners working on
R504 Kolyma Highway

Edited by Moristotle

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

Between 1932 and 1953, more than 250,000 Gulag inmate labourers died while building the R504 Kolyma Highway through the Russian Far East. Historians often cite the loss of these lives as a horrific example of Joseph Stalin's brutal leadership of the former Soviet Union – but at least the country wound up with a usable road that functioned through impossibly inhospitable weather and across unbelievably rugged terrain.

West Coast Observer: Will Trump Be Indicted for Anything after January 20?

And how do you feel about it?

By William Silveira

The question atop today’s observation is on many people’s minds. How likely do I think it is that Trump will be indicted for alleged crimes or misdemeanors after he leaves office? My opinion has nothing to do with the fact-finding that I did as a judge when I had a dispute before me. But I do have an opinion, based on news published in credible newspapers, such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

West Coast Observer: Game Over

Remembering Ernest Thayer’s 1888 baseball poem

By William Silveira

How timely now is the last stanza of “Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888”!:

West Coast Observer: Election Day

By William Silveira

I recommend that all readers of Moristotle & Co. read the Sunday Review in the New York Times for November 1 [October 30 on the internet:“What have we lost?”]. Fifteen of the Times columnists explain “what the past four years have cost America and what’s at stake in this election.” It’s a sobering analysis and will ring true regardless of today’s election results:

West Coast Observer: A Tale of “Murder” in Kings County

By William Silveira

A murder case in nearby Kings County gives off a whiff of the social control of women portrayed in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. A woman was charged with murder following the stillbirth of her baby with toxic levels of methamphetamine in its system.^* The woman sought to have the charge dismissed as a misinterpretation of the murder statute, Penal Code 187, in charging her with the drug-connected stillbirth.

West Coast Observer: Too Much Already, and More to Come

By William Silveira

Two  urgent books, The Room Where It Happened, by John Bolton, and Too Much Is Never Enough, by Mary Trump, provide shocking insights into the malignant individual who is the United States’ current president. Bolton was the head of the National Security Council before resigning. He recounts numerous instances of Trump’s chaotic mismanagement of foreign affairs.

West Coast Observer: Del Bosque Farms and Water

By William Silveira

After the publication of my observation (“American Hypocrisy”) on Alfredo Corchado’s article in the New York Times, “A Former Farm Worker on American Hypocrisy,” I decided to do some research on Del Bosque Farms, and I found a very interesting post regarding that company on a website sponsored by the American Farmlands Trust, an organization in the United States that works to protect and conserve farmland.

West Coast Observer: American Hypocrisy

By William Silveira

In the New York Times article “A Former Farmworker on American Hypocrisy” (May 6, 2020), Alfredo Corchado accuses our government of hypocrisy when it says workers formerly considered “illegal” are now “essential.” Much of what Corchado discusses was known to me. I grew up in Tulare and have resided in Tulare County my whole life. My father was a farm owner with 400 acres of farm land south of Tulare. At the time I was growing up, we raised sugar beets, cotton, milo, barley, and alfalfa. We also had pigs. My brother and I irrigated these crops and cut, mowed, and raked the alfalfa. In our spare time we were expected to help out with the pigs – fence maintenance, health care, and feeding.

West Coast Observer: A slap against Devin Nunes

By William Silveira

The title of a March 14 article in the Washington Post asks its readers to “Raise your hand if you have not been sued by Devin Nunes,” implying, of course, that Congressman Nunes has sued a lot of people. Columnist Dana Milbank states that “The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee has, aided by a lawyer with a colorful past and a flair for invective, sued just about everybody who criticizes him.” Everybody who criticizes him. Well, that includes me, and he hasn’t sued me yet, so I guess I need to raise my hand. Or, maybe I’m next.

Interview: Autobiographer Shirley Skufca Hickman

Shirley Skufca, in her years
at Tulare Union High School
(1958-60)

On the 4th volume of her life story

Interviewed by Moristotle

Early on, as I luxuriated in reading Shirley Skufca Hickman’s Rocky Road Is More Than a Candy Bar, I determined that I had to interview Shirley, if for no other reason than to try to find out how she could remember so much of her life of 60 years ago – even stuff about me that I don’t remember. Yes, I am mentioned a few times in the book, which includes the story of her two years as a new teacher at Tulare Union High School – my junior & senior years and, more prominently, William Silveira and Jim Rix’s as well. Bill & Jim have already announced and written about Shirley’s book on Moristotle & Co.
    And as I continued to read, even more intriguing questions arose than how she could remember so much. Let’s see what the questions were, and how she replies to them. They are in italics.

Rocky Road Is More Than a Candy Bar (Excerpt 1 from an autobiography)

Chapter 3 opens: A new teacher’s first day

[Editor’s Note: Jim Rix has introduced us to the 4th volume of Shirley Skufca Hickman’s autobiography in his own autobiographical column, “My Life,” and William Silveira reviewed the book on March 18. So, today, we present an excerpt from the book, the opening of Chapter 3, in which the author describes the first day of her first week as a new high school teacher. The rest of the chapter will appear on Wednesday. And remember, if you know how to access Amazon.com, you can “look inside” the book there.]

West Coast Observer: What’s in a name?

By William Silveira

Undergraduates in Yale College who were residing in residential Calhoun College in academic year 2016-2017 started residing in Hopper College the following year. They didn’t accomplish that by moving their stuff from one residential college to another, but by Yale University’s renaming Calhoun College (after John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who served as the seventh vice president of the United States) to Hopper College (after Grace Murray Hopper, an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral).

Book Review: Rocky Road Is More Than a Candy Bar

The fourth volume of Shirley Skufca Hickman’s autobiography

By William Silveira

Rocky Road Is More Than a Candy Bar is the fourth volume of Shirley Skufca Hickman’s memoirs. The first volume started out in the small coal mining settlement of Crested Butte, Colorado, where she was born. She now takes us to her first job as a teacher after graduating from Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado.

My Life [5]

From contract programming to software ownership

By Jim Rix

When I began contract programming, around 1980, computer software lagged far behind computer hardware. Skilled programmers were consequently in high demand, and contract programming was quite lucrative. I contracted with companies like Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, two semiconductor manufacturers, as well as companies with federal aerospace contracts.

West Coast Observer: A Library Fire

By William Silveira





I live so close to Porterville, California, that I didn’t need to read Time’s article “Boys, 13, Charged with Murder for Fire at California Library That Killed 2 Firefighters” to learn about the fire on February 28:

West Coast Observer: The comedy isn’t funny

By William Silveira

The persistence of local Trump support – that is, around my part of California’s Central San Joaquin Valley – is baffling. To write a whole column about it would be a challenge I’m not sure I could meet. Trump is our Comedian in Chief, and it is sad that too many people still find him entertaining, not to mention what an insult it is to the American taxpayer that his or her dollars go to pay for Trump’s road shows, like Monday’s in El Paso.

Same popular book, but with a new cover

Lots happening with its author

By Moristotle

Prolific author Shirley Skufca Hickman’s popular book Fall in Love with an Orange Tree or a Book, about a teenager whose immigrant parents are deported back to Mexico, has a new cover. Explains Shirley: