Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Essays”

Food? Cooking!

I first tasted food in the crowded but livable Brooklyn neighborhood where my parents rented a small, dark one-bedroom apartment. My mother didn’t have to buy or cook the food since it came directly from…

The Cruise

The travel brochure promised happiness and a trip I’d never forget. That promise was more than fulfilled in August 1959 when my Grandmother asked me to join her on a ten-day cruise to Nassau in…

Chinatown, Our Chinatown [1950]

The biggest Chinatown outside of Asia. Where 30,000 people are crowded into a few blocks, so they can attract tourists and disease. Chinatown. Beloved indulgently and condescendingly by the rest of San Francisco—as long as…

Senior Benefits: Low Income Housing

The HUD low-income senior housing complex in Garberville is a cute assortment of one bedroom cottages, between the hospital and the library, on the edge of town with views from benches out to the canyons…

The ‘Joy Of Cooking’

A cookbook taught me the joy of cooking for others… When I graduated from college, a family member bought me some of her favorite kitchen essentials for my new home: three sturdy casserole dishes and…

Tourism: Joke Without A Punchline

Tourism in Mendocino County is the ship that never docks, the train that never slows, the freeway exit always closed for repairs.  Tourists in Ukiah: the dream that will not die, the hope that won’t…

A Thanksgiving Feast With Handel

For those with means, there is always too much food at Thanksgiving. Overproduction and overconsumption go hand in hand, or perhaps from hand into mouth. As Sir Thomas Malory, didn’t put it, Enough is as…

God Gave This Land To Me

As the destruction of Gaza unfolds day after endless day I find myself thinking about my late friend Otto Schnepp. Otto and I served on the board of directors of the local Democrats’ club for…

The Fox & The Leafhoppers

Is it time to confess environmental crimes against nature?  I had decided to expand my pot patch into a new area in the back forty, a cute trick on just one acre, no doubt. I…

-