Well over 200 people came to West Marin from far and wide on a recent Sunday to hear United States Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin give a rare reading in West Marin. His appearance was arranged…
Posts published by “Steve Heilig”
Halfway into his recent nonstop 2-hours-plus set at San Francisco’s fabled Fillmore, Willie Nelson eased into one of his more romantic hits, “You Were Always on My Mind.” Begging for another chance with a neglected…
The Grateful Dead? Those guys and their fanatic, tie-died, permanently stoned followers? The band that made interminable music which a noted poet and writer I reviewed for the San Francisco Chronicle called “unspeakable, self-indulgent dreck”?…
(Caution: There may be some blasphemy in the following message, although it is certainly unintended.) This past cold Christmas morning I took a traditional dogwalk through San Francisco’s fabled Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. It was pretty much…
“The Summer of Love, protests to be civil and a rainbow of counterculture. Whether you started here or put flowers in your hair, grabbed a drum and hitched a ride on a painted minibus, Camel…
Maybe I should have wagered money with some of my friends regarding the outcome of Proposition 19, the doomed “legalize marijuana” initiative.
When my mother died late on a recent night, I knew I would not be getting any sleep anytime soon, and so went out to walk in the dark. In my semi-shocked state, the next…
Re-reading the favorite books of one’s youth can be dangerous, or at least disappointing. They rarely measure up to the image and influence they had upon first encounter. That has too often been my sad experience, at least. But Henry Miller has been a happy exception.