For over a month now, at least half of the nation has been suffering from PTSD: Pre-Trump Stress Disorder. Our nation has self-inflicted a very serious sickness - actually, a relapse of a recurring, chronic, ugly syndrome. And when Patti Smith, standing in for Bob Dylan at the recent Nobel ceremony, sang his "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," I could only think, Alas, yes indeed.
Posts published in “Essays”
The holidays loom again, and isn't it funny how we use the word “loom,” with its slightly dire connotation, to describe the approach of this most joyous of seasons. You know what else “looms”? Giants,…
My late friend Ernest Peninou wrote four books on vineyards and wineries in California. I met Ernie in 1977 when he co-owned a grapevine nursery in Winters. Grape vines were in short supply and my…
On Sunday, November 6, in Redwood Valley, several hundred people gathered to listen to activists report back from Standing Rock where they had stood in solidarity with Native American Tribes, known as Water Protectors, opposing…
The Mail Tribune, an Oregon newspaper, published a long story last week on Vernon and Charlene Rollins. The Rollins’ are retiring after a presumably lucratively long run as proprietors of a famous restaurant just north…
We stopped complaining about computers in the classroom decades ago because the train left the station and the educrats drank the Kool-Aid (pardon the double cliché) and no rational arguments were allowed. According to the…
When Marcia gave me the news of the terrible fire and deaths of many young people in the Oakland warehouse that had become a haven for artists, I first worried about a few young people I know in Oakland who would have been attracted to such a scene. When I confirmed those few were alive and well, I settled into grieving for those who died in that conflagration.
His maternal grandfather, named Rakin, was the rector of The Episcopal Church of Columbus, when Tennessee Williams was born in that Mississippi city on March 26 in 1911. His paternal grandfather, one Lanier Williams II, a man of accredited lineage, squandered a fortune trying unsuccessfully to become governor. His mother Edwina was capable of managing a man, a beast, or a storm. His father, Cornelius Coffin Williams, was demeaned during his military career as a simple ne'er do well and wound up as a traveling salesman for a shoe company--a job which permitted him to visit the whorehouse of every place he worked.
I've been recuperating from some unidentified type of virus, a flu or something that refuses to exit completely. For close to a month I have felt drained, energyless; it's hard to put one foot in…