bobwelch23
Mar 20, 20236 min read
My final thoughts on Foz
When Dick Fosbury’s agent told me Monday morning (March 13, 2022) that lymphoma had claimed the 76-year-old man who’d won an Olympic gold...
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bobwelch23
Mar 19, 20206 min read
Jim Bartko: 1965-2020
Editor’s note: This is the Jim Bartko obituary that appeared in The Register-Guard March 19, 2020. Jim Bartko, a former University of...
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bobwelch23
Jul 8, 20194 min read
Two foul balls go gently into Dylan Thomas’ ‘good night’
Daughter-in-law Deena, here with our son, Jason, and their three boys. When a foul ball flies toward you, a spectator, there’s not much...
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bobwelch23
Aug 8, 20185 min read
Hiking Pacific Crest Trail unveils a unique cast of odd but friendly characters
An Israeli couple — trail-named Bugs and Bunny — hiking with speakers atop their backpacks, listening to rock music? Check. Yours truly,...
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bobwelch23
Jul 26, 20182 min read
My PCT race against death
This isn’t how our trip was supposed to end. But a fire near he Oregon-California border has once again curtailed a Pacific Crest Trail...
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bobwelch23
Feb 5, 20174 min read
The lesson Prof. Coleman taught me
Nothing puts life into context like death. And so it was that while at Edwin Coleman’s memorial service last Tuesday, I was reminded why,...
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bobwelch23
Oct 2, 20164 min read
After 900 miles on the PCT, 10 lessons I’ve learned
But having just finished another section — 217 miles from just north of the Columbia River to Snoqualmie Pass east of Seattle — to...
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bobwelch23
Sep 12, 20164 min read
What I learned while teaching inmates to write
SALEM — An hour before I’m to present a three-hour writers workshop at the maximum security facility of the Oregon State Penitentiary,...
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bobwelch23
Jun 6, 20163 min read
A brush with something other than fame
Appeared in Register-Guard newspaper, June 5, 2016 I was high on a ladder, doing something I’d vowed I’d never do again, when a neighbor...
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bobwelch23
Apr 3, 20164 min read
To Haiti, with, I thought, love
From the April 3, 2016 Register-Guard By Bob Welch It was March Madness season. She Who Was Leaving Me had packed her bags and was ready...
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bobwelch23
Dec 7, 20154 min read
The ‘coast road’ is for ‘The Birds’
BODEGA BAY, Calif. — The schoolteacher in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds” is talking with the newcomer in town. “Did you drive up...
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bobwelch23
Jul 8, 20153 min read
Editing: Pay Now or Pay Later
It happens every time. OK, nearly every time. I unwrap the book-size package and am soon holding the dream-come-true from one of our...
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bobwelch23
Mar 13, 20154 min read
Lessons from Dave Frohnmayer
A FEW YEARS AGO, Dave Frohnmayer and I were speaking at Northwest Christian University on the subject of leadership when he shared an...
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bobwelch23
Dec 27, 20143 min read
Two Words of Advice: Stop it!
We were going around the room, introducing ourselves at a recent writers workshop I was leading, when one of the attendees got negative...
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bobwelch23
May 2, 20143 min read
First grandson turns 9
EDITOR’S NOTE: When Cade Welch, our first grandson, was born in 2005, I began a ritual of writing a once-a-year letter to him in The...
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bobwelch23
Mar 5, 20143 min read
Entertaining angels
I’ve been marketing books of mine now for more than 20 years but only recently realized a big mistake I was making: Thinking it was only...
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bobwelch23
Feb 12, 20143 min read
Living a Yahtzee life
They say if you want to make money in the writing business you find a niche and go to that place again and again. In other words, if the...
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bobwelch23
Feb 12, 20143 min read
Mother of Rain outstanding
Mother of Rain, about hardscrabble life in the hills of Tennessee in the 1930s and ’40s, is the most intriguing read I’ve experienced in...
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bobwelch23
Dec 12, 20132 min read
Weekend in Bedford Falls
SENECA FALLS, N.Y. — Tonight, in a snow-swept town south of Syracuse, I stepped foot in Bedford Falls for the first time. Sort of....
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bobwelch23
Nov 16, 20133 min read
Time for my ‘Second Life’
A colleague once told me that column writing is a little like running in front of a combine in a farmer’s field: exhilarating, exhausting...
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