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Posts published in “Essays”

Carnage

The crash of the Democratic Party has hit home – literally. We’re all reluctant liberal Democrats in our family since Bernie lost his presidential nomination by a whisker to Hillary Clinton. Here in the Bay…

The Hitchhiker [December, 2008]

The hitchhiker was at the Boonville exit on 101. It was about noon. As I passed her she clasped her hands in mock prayer and shot me desperate eyeballs that pleaded with me to please,…

Rounding Third, Heading For Home

I'm not sure you can say it’s a shock if you know it’s coming, but I had known for a while that Ken Anderson was taking his final lap, and it was still a shock…

Pearl Harbor Survivor [my annual remembrance]

Count me as one. I was two, my brother one, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941. My brother and I were born in Honolulu, Our paternal grandfather, a Scots immigrant, was…

Donner, Party Of 81, Er 45

In December of 2001 my dog Jasper the Wonderdog and I were walking up a street called Slalom, approximately 6,500 feet above sea level in the Sierra, on the outskirts of the town of Truckee.…

The Great Flood of 1927

Most people couldn't recall a time like it. For months on end in the midwest of 1927, and across much of the country, it rained steadily, sometimes in volumes not before seen. Southern Illinois received…

Brother Ray Makes My Day

One sunny San Francisco morning in the 1990s I was sitting in my office trying to decide which pile of papers and journals and telephone messages piled on my desk to tackle first, when the…

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