Robert Whale

1 week ago | federalwaymirror.com | Robert Whale

April 12 is always a dark day for my family. For me, Saturday will be freighted with a heavy sense of disbelief — it will be the 50th anniversary of my brother Jim’s death. Half a century. No. Can’t be true. But it is. I can do the math: I was 13 then, I am 63 now. Still, internally, it’s hard to process. To sober me to this, the hardest of hard facts, I often catch myself doing a bit of simple math.

2 weeks ago | auburn-reporter.com | Robert Whale

At a special meeting at 5:30 p.m. April 7, the Auburn City Council will choose candidates to interview to fill out the remainder of the second term of former Councilmember and Deputy Mayor Larry Brown. Brown, Position 6, resigned on Feb. 16 for unspecified health reasons. In November, the city will hold an election for the seat. It will be open to everyone, except the temporary placeholder, with the winner taking office in January 2026 to serve a full four-year term. At their Feb.

2 weeks ago | rentonreporter.com | Robert Whale

Life unfolds in a series of epiphanies. So they say. But one with razor sharp claws, pleading eyes, jaws in perpetual chomp-on-that-thing mode, highly mobile ears that move like radars searching the heavens for extra-terrestrial life, and thievery bred in the bone? Seems I was not ready for the unquenchable energy of the 4-month-old German Shepherd puppy who became part of our home in April 2024. We got her from a friend of Ann’s, as one of the two remaining pups from a litter of nine.

2 weeks ago | federalwaymirror.com | Robert Whale

As readers of this column may know by now, I am a word person. Words, their histories, and their shifting meanings across linguistic barriers and over time draw me. Like swivel — noun and verb — which are ultimately derived from the Old English swivana, “to sweep, to sweep, to rotate.” But by the mid 14th Century when Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, it meant “to have sex with,” in the coarsest, umm, present day sense of that word.

2 weeks ago | auburn-reporter.com | Robert Whale

Sometime in 2026, Auburn’s Downtown Reconstruction Project should realize a new, three-to-four-story theater to replace the now demolished Auburn Avenue Theater, a new city park with a public gathering place to its east, and a major upgrade to the B Street Plaza across East Main Street. But before all the shiny stuff goes up, there is a lot of work that will have to be done under Main Street.