At San Francisco’s Maison Nico—an épicerie (a grocery) and a café—where I’ve been shopping, eating and sipping wine and coffee at least once a week for the past six months, I’m reminded of Paris in…
Posts published by “Jonah Raskin”
I feel doubly or triply connected to the war in the Ukraine because my grandparents on my mother’s side of the family came from the Ukraine, escaped with their lives and little else, though they…
I’m a walker, not a hiker, though my preference for walking over hiking hasn’t prevented me from admiring Sam Tidwell, who went on a long road trip, solo, soon after his 21st birthday and who…
He loved the sounds and the heft of words, though the first words he heard were not English words. Mais non. They were joual, the dialect of working class French Canadians spoken by his parents…
“The power of the dog is all those urges, all those deep, uncontrollable urges that can come and destroy us.” – Jane Campion, director, screenwriter What’s a “western”? Moviegoers and film critics have been asking…
American Indians are rebounding in California and all across the U.S.A., and they’re popularizing words like “indigeneity,” which is defined as originating in a specific place. White folks are also rebounding. Hasting Law School is…
When Osha Neumann sees people living on the streets of Berkeley and Oakland he doesn’t feel a sense of hopelessness or powerlessness. Nor does he turn away, or want the homeless to disappear, become invisible…