My odd job for the morning was from a voice mail that came last night, in the early evening. A man said he was calling from a donut shop in the Sunset, and the guy…
Posts published in “Essays”
The Johnnie Pinoli funeral at Evergreen Cemetery on a warm winter afternoon two weeks ago was a remarkable celebration of his life and roots in Anderson Valley. At least a hundred family and friends attended,…
Remember those bumper stickers years ago that read “He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins”? It was a catchy, relatable sentiment that appealed to the acquisitive, competitive beast within us all, especially at a…
A Review of “Bewilderment,” By Richard Powers. (WW Norton 278 pp. $27.95.) Movie screens are often tinged with it these days. Fiction and non-Fiction authors seem intrigued by it, when not immersed in the genre.…
As with many mistakes in life and a few smart moves, this story starts with a girl. Shari was her name, or it might have been Sharri. All my life has happened since then, so…
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…
On the one-year anniversary of the storming of the U.S. Capitol many were the dire assessments of the state of the American republic. Nor were watchdogs of democracy cheered by the situation across the Atlantic.…