Posts published in “Essays”

The first time I heard Rush Limbaugh was on my father’s car radio decades ago. Rush was lecturing away on some topic, I think illegal immigration and the horrors thereof, and went on and on.…

Ah, San Francisco…greatly beloved since the very day of my sixteenth birthday, when, with the ink barely dry on my driver’s license, I sallied forth to begin years of rock concerts, strolls down Haight and…

Last week’s adulatory piece on Carl Hart’s book “Drug Use for Grown-Ups” evoked disagreement from AVA reader Terry Miller. Her comment —”A horrible horrible book by a man who should not be teaching students”— was…

Ten-year old Robert, “Bobby B,” so-called, because there were two other Robert/Bob’s in his third grade class, was seated in the first row in Miss Fritz’ classroom. He was particularly fidgety that third day of…

It was a Pat Benatar kind of day, a day when I knew I would say, at least once, “Hit me with your best shot.” I was scheduled for a vaccination, my first, and I…

When you write for a living, you invariably pen obituaries in advance so they are ready to be published as soon as the death knell of the famous is sounded. I could never do that…