Sal Maglie: Baseball’s Demon Barber by Judith Testa, Northern Illinois University Press, 2007; 463 pages. It took an art historian from a midwestern college to give Sal Maglie the biography he deserved. The subject seems…
Posts published by “Fred Gardner”
On the eve of the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres recent two-game series in Mexico City, the Chronicle ran a long piece by Susan Slusser on April 28 about “The Giants’ Mission for…
Continuation of “Working the Mare Island Nukes.” Three men in their early thirties, James, Kevin and Gerry, are telling a reporter about defueling and refueling nuclear submarines. The “head” is the top half of the…
In 1980 a mutual friend put me in touch with Gerry Stone, a Mare Island shipyard worker who had seen some things he thought the public ought to know about. I was then a hustling…
The Editor has asked for recommendations. It’s Easter Sunday and I’m re-reading ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’ — the gospel made plausible by humane Philip Pullman. Here are some more fave raves:…
This is a note to John King, who has the architecture beat for the SF Chronicle. I sent him this note last week after he wrote a piece about 1455 Market Street: In 1996, when…
Even in his own obituary, John Jenrette had to yield the spotlight to lovely Rita, his devoted wife from long ago. The Times’ account began, “John Jenrette Jr., a charismatic Democratic Representative from South Carolina who…
The Israeli chemist Raphael Mechoulam, who died last week at 92, should have gotten the Nobel Prize for his role in figuring out how marijuana exerts its effects within the body. ("Elucidating the endocannabinoid system,"…
The Temporary Inmate “Charles Pernasilice, Haunted by the Violence at Attica, Dies at 70,” said the hed above a photo of a lanky, handsome young man standing outside a municipal building with his right fist in…