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Posts published in “Essays”

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…

Local Competency Restoration

As humans we are hardwired to quickly detect when another person’s behavior appears outside the norm. It’s an aspect of human intuition that is instantly recognizable but hard to put into words. But if you…

Thanks for Nothing, Hippies

In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I was a hippie, and yes, I was at Woodstock. I’ve spent most of the intervening half century pissing off the hippies and making fun of the grandiosely…

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