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Posts published in “Essays”

Bayeux Fever

It was only after I left the Bar Bayeux in Brooklyn last Friday night, elated after two riveting sets from the Michael Sarin Quintet, that I realized that the club’s name was a clever pun…

Barnstorming With Hot Air: A Self-Made Balloon Man [Nov 2007]

His name is not Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, but he’ll answer to Kevin Herschman. Oz, as his friends may call him, is the engaging young man piloting the blue balloon…

When Balloon Man Came To The Valley

REMEMBER WHEN BALLOON MAN drifted low over The Valley on that wintry afternoon in his patchwork quilt of a homemade zeppelin, the airborne object looking as if granma’s sewing basket had turned upside down and…

The Mushroom Pirates

The first time I made money picking wild fungus for the restaurant trade was when a friend offered to let me keep all the gambones (boletus edulis, aka cepes, aka porcinis) I could pick on…

A Giant Strides Among Us

The time will come, though you and I will not be present to witness it, when most everything about our era is forgotten, just as we’ve forgotten most everything about the semi-distant past. Unbelievable as…

The 32nd Annual Anderson Valley Variety Show

Kicking off the 32nd Annual Anderson Valley Variety Show was one of the better opening acts in living memory. There always has to be a dilemma that needs fixing. This year Captain Rainbow’s beloved tuxedo…

Fascism Arrives

"This is Fascism" is the title of a Counterpunch Radio show featuring Ralph Nader that aired March 18. Those same words had crossed my mind two days before. The thought must be occurring to millions…

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