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Posts published in “Essays”

Donald Dukes: The First “City Kid,” Part 2

My earlier report on the childhood of Donald Dukes, Bob Glover’s step-son, described his migration from a Kentucky coal camp to industrial Hammond, Indiana, to Bob’s ancestral Guntly Ranch all by the age of ten.…

A Friend of Bill’s

UCSF Medical Center is the largest employer in San Francisco besides the city and county itself. Cliff LeBlanc worked there for more than 42 years, retiring in 1998. He was calm, amiable, very knowledgable about…

People’s Park, Berkeley

In the southwest corner of the 2.8 acres of unbuilt land in Berkeley known since April 20, 1970 as “People’s Park,” there grew a tree which I planted there that morning. An unlabeled sapling, about…

I’m Very Old, As God Knows, & He’s Watching

I turn 80 in a few days, as I’ve been saying for about six months now and it’s a good age. I don’t think about my health, I am living proof that bad habits don’t…

History of Pharmaceuticals and Their High Cost in the US

The cost of prescription drugs in the US is the highest in the world and by a substantial margin.  We pay over 250% more for medications than similar countries. If a person is fortunate enough…

Mining Mount Shasta

I am standing at the base of Mount Shasta on a late summer day as rivulets of snowmelt bleed out of rock and fill up a small pool whose waters will join other pools and…

The Invitation

I got an invitation yesterday to the opening of an art exhibit at The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, NC because our family lent a painting to the show a couple…

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