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Posts published in “Essays”

Cleaning Women

A group of international writers, all of whom were Spanish speakers, was invited to an academic conference recently held at New York University. During the conference, a woman from the audience suddenly intervened. First she…

Forty: Part 1

In T minus a few days, in the middle of the middle of the night, I will be forty years old. I know it's just another day and I know it's just a number but…

A Hard Rain’s Already Fallen

Vallonia, Indiana, Labor Day, 2019 — "Do you believe in that there 'global warming’?" asked the lady whose husband dropped off a port-o-pottie at our Hoosier homestead back in early June when I still entertained…

Power Outages Loom

In response to Julie Beardsley — “Regarding potential power outages by PG&E: if it is 103 degrees outside, and the power goes off for extended periods, there will be people who will experience high levels…

Graham Greene in the Côte d’Azur

Spread out along the bay, Nice was an old fashioned city with a certain dilapidated look to it. It had become a kingdom of blue-haired grandmothers and deeply suntanned old men, all wandering the English…

The Triumphant Return of Mr. Hospitality

You can all breathe a sigh of relief— I'm not about to start belaboring the particulars of whatever it is I've been up to of late. Even I grow weary of the patterns of debauchery,…

Measure V is Law

On June 7, 2016, Mendocino County voters approved Measure V, declaring intentionally-killed and left-standing trees a public nuisance. At issue was the local timber industry practice of poisoning millions of trees and then leaving them…

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