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…
Posts published in “Essays”
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…
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…
Feliz Creek today, where it passes beneath Highway 101 at Hopland is, in the summer, a parched expanse of dry streambed that is barely discernible as a watercourse. Only when it comes alive in the…
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,…
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…
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…
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…