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Posts published in “Essays”

Confessions Of A Brexist

(London) It’s my first trip back to Britain—or England as I now make a point of calling this parcel of the disunited island kingdom—since 2015…

Dry Heaving in Paradise

In the chilly hours of morning we folded our tent, rolled our rain fly and gazed up toward the steep climb ahead. There are higher…

Looking For Serenity

It's light out though the sun has yet to pop through the horizon. The nuthatches and chickadees greet me as they visit the two birdfeeders a few feet from one of the kitchen windows. There are a few cardinals feeding on the ground underneath the feeders, their speech a reproach: tch, tch, tch.

My First Paying Job

I was 13. It was 1958. We lived at what was then the outskirts of suburban Fresno. Down the street about half a mile was…

Gene & Grandma

Gene Wilder died in August. He was eighty-three. Thinking about him took me back to the first time I saw the movie Young Frankenstein on the big screen in San Francisco in 1974. And I remember feeling as I watched the film that I was witnessing one of those extremely rare creations, a work of art that would never grow old and never be successfully imitated—the result of the unique chemistry of six superlative actors and a brilliant director, none of them duplicable: Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Terry Garr, Peter Boyle, Madeline Kahn, and Mel Brooks.

Who Saw It Coming?

(from the AVA of September 12, 2001) Tuesday’s onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor and the comparison is…

Cold Turkey

I "discovered" something interesting through my yoga practice recently. I've been at it for nearly five years and consider it one of the most worthwhile…

Freda

I imagine you all know who Freda Fox is. Isn’t she the oldest living person in Anderson Valley now? Freda is not only the oldest…

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