David Fechheimer, San Francisco's premier private investigator, died April 2 after open-heart surgery. We'd been friends for 44 years, minus two. David is Stephen Best in this piece the AVA ran in January, 1990. The…
Posts published in “Essays”
“The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in…
Atsuko and I were on a superbike traveling fast over the Golden Gate Bridge. I was under the influence of cocaine and alcohol. A cop pulled me over and busted me
Way back in the early 1970s I stumbled upon a then-new record titled "Blue Moses" by pianist Randy Weston. It had a very colorful, almost psychedelic cover and a roster of top jazz stars like…
Toward the end of my four-year tour at Keesler Air Force Base outside Biloxi, Mississippi, it was becoming clear that President Nixon’s quixotic attempt to “Vietnamize” the Vietnam war by, among other things, training Vietnamese…
My mom was trained as a registered nurse during the Second World War. She spoke often of the miracle of penicillin, at that time only available to the troops, and a new future where so…
If a behavioral phenomenon that is demonstrably and seriously harmful to society becomes a pattern, we (the societal we) pass a law against it, which is our way of saying: Don't do this thing or we…
Judge Faulder invited your trusty correspondent into his chambers last week for a little discussion on Objectivity In The Press, opening with the White Queen’s Gambit: “Your writing is delightful, Bruce, just delightful. I’d much…