The suburbs are a war zone. That was how the General saw things. He was my aunt’s father-in-law. I met him only a handful of times over the years, mostly at family celebrations, like my…
Posts published in “Essays”
(Amidst all the pugilistic politics marking Mexican-American relations of late, the Musical Patriot limbers up a column that trotted into the ring of public opinion ten years ago, in May of 2015.) Although the singing…
Now if you ask me, there isn’t a guy more loving and supportive of his dear wife than I am of the gal I call Trophy. You could ask her opinion, but at the moment…
(Writer’s note: I was born in 1957. As a result, the closest I came to the Vietnam War was as a child in the 1960s watching the nightly talking heads deliver the daily body count…
Dorothea Puente’s Death House, Sacramento. Seven or so poor senior souls robbed of their Social Security and their lives by Madame Puente, buried in Ms. P’s boarding-house backyard. My god! 1980s. I live here in…
In these days when the formerly public sphere is balkanized by billions of individualized audiotopias in which so many are plugged into their own algorithmized soundtracks, the actual choosing of music for a road trip…
Robert G. Elliott was not a murderous person by nature, but he proved, no doubt to his own surprise, to be rather good at killing people. A well-groomed, silver-haired man with a pipe and a…