As everyone knows, the villain in any prison story is the warden. Of course, prison being what it is, a kind of central receiving for villains, it's chock-full of them, but the real bull-goose villain,…
Posts published in “Essays”
This is a story about something that isn’t supposed to happen. It illustrates the strangeness of the world of marijuana, and for that reason no so-called “reputable” newspaper or magazine wants to touch it. It…
Most voters may have stayed at home but nevertheless Measure B, a one-half cent tax to improve abysmal mental health services in this county, won going away with 83 percent approving basically the same initiative…
When getting ready for bed around 11:30pm Sunday night, October 8, 2017, my 87-year-old dad heard loud noises from outside, 60-65 mph winds. He looked out his bedroom window. He saw dots on the hill behind his house and thought there was a fire.
My old friend Gibbons sent me a copy to review for – what else? – the AVA. Jim and I are AVA old-timers, and my first exposure to the paper was in 1988 at his…
Jerry Brown’s California enters this new age with a halo over its head. We “get” climate change and thumb our noses at the mad denialist in the White House. Our governor advocates the Paris standards…
We first spotted him when we came up the stairs to the second deck. He was hard to miss. We were still in the station in L.A. on a gorgeous sunny morning, all-aboarding the Coast…
A couple of months ago at a family dinner party, a high school sophomore from my son-in-law’s side of the family walked into the room, taking time out from her texting long enough to say…
PG&E is now under investigation by state authorities trying to determine whether the electrical monopoly’s power lines played a role in igniting Northcoast wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes and killed 43 people. Both the…