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Posts published in “Essays”

Performance Anxiety

How did I get into this? As a kid that was the inevitable question of concert day. I still ask it now and again. One of my colleagues, to be heard on violin with your…

How I Got Fired From KPFZ

Part 1: The Descent “Oh boy, you’ve really done it this time”, I thought to myself as I walked down the darkened hallway to the back door of the KPFZ’s Lakeport studio. I had just…

Semper Fine

This is for all the former Marine Corps “grunts” who might have served at Camp Las Pulgas, Camp Pendleton, California, the gruesome high dry desert where we trained for the jungles of Vietnam. Not the…

Coming to Mendocino

People sometimes ask me if I remember the 1906 Earthquake. Not only do I remember the Big One, but, Hell, I brought it on! After leaving Northern Italy, crossing France, getting on a steamship and…

Gimme Shelter

As we wake up to Old Man Winter’s icy mornings to pull on our coats, hats, and gloves to scrape the overnight ice off our windshields, the issue of the county’s homeless naturally grows more…

A Tale of Two Hospitals

Some years ago, I found myself in the Sutter Lakeside Emergency Room on Christmas Day. I was not injured or ill, having arrived via ambulance with a patient. By late afternoon, my mutinous belly growled…

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