Graffiti is mildly annoying in small doses, but no city can risk allowing it to spread. Defacing public or private property is a test, and a town that ignores it will soon be visited by…
Posts published in “Essays”
What is seduction? It's when you aim to persuade someone to have sex with you, whether they want to or not. But maybe it's lots of other things. I’m open to that idea, though right…
Georgiana Hathaway entered the world in early December, 1887, at Point Arena where her parents had resided for years after emigrating from Maine and Massachusetts. Her father, Robert Hathaway, possessed a beard that grew to…
Picture a slim, beardless ruddy-cheeked Swedish Santa Claus in a slate blue business suit and brightly striped bow tie with the rough, gnarled hands of a catcher. It's Al Erle, the benevolent czar of semi-pro…
I pinched another one out of my motorcycle seat recently after I made a right turn, and afterwards failed to cancel my non-self-cancelling turn indicator. An oncoming driver understandably anticipating I was about to turn…
Among the most alluring of cross-species collaborations is truffle hunting, a pursuit that brings dog—or, more rarely these days, pig—together with man. Women, it seems, are as uncommon as swine in this field. Unearthing culinary…
The pacifiers were sold one to a package. I asked for a dozen—maybe $20 worth back then. “That's a lot,” the clerk said. “You don't know this baby,” I told her. Bill H. was one…
It's all about attention: we all want it, we all need it, so how we gonna get it? There is a finite amount and social media is sucking up most of it. Thousands of engineers…
As an adult, the smartest thing my mentally ill and drug-addicted brother did was to move to the City and County of San Francisco. I was there the day it happened. I had just picked…