Friday I emerged from bed a couple hours after noon, made a pot of tea and went out back to toss a loaf of cheap…
Posts published in “Essays”
What does spending $100 billion over the last ten years get you? It gets one huge, bloated, ineffectual agency of government — the NSA (National…
Ithaca, New York — I live between a gorge and a cemetery, a position that often gets me to thinking about the fleeting nature of life.…
We were having supper with friends recently, and somehow the conversation came around to Shakespeare and the news that a number of American universities have dropped the Bard entirely from their lists of required courses for English majors. And the question was asked, “Why should Shakespeare be required reading for English majors in this age of tweeting and texting and unedited garbage topping the bestseller lists and the English language disintegrating faster than the earth is warming?
Yesterday San Francisco’s politicians announced that Google, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies will be charged for the use of the city’s bus stops. Until…
Charles Mallory Hatfield was certainly the most successful person to practice the art of pluviculture, or artificial rainmaking. Born in Kansas but raised in southern California, Hatfield first gained broad public acclaim when, in 1904, he climbed to the top of Mt. Lowe and released a secret mixture of chemicals into the air.
Last autumn, I received permission to harvest apples from our neighbor’s tree. I had no idea what variety they were; they looked a bit like…
Do you believe that your contributions are really helping the less fortunate? Do you want to know where the tax dollars and honorable contributions for the needy are really going? Have you been told that there are plenty of services, programs, and much help given to the impoverished people in your community? I asked these same questions and would like to share my experience with you.
Actually, I was not a computer professor but a junior college part-time computer instructor in the late 1980s at Evergreen Valley Community College in San…
In 1967, when I was a senior in high school and intending to grow up to be a star of stage and screen, I landed one of the leads in the Woodside High production of the not-so-great musical Take Me Along, based on Eugene O’Neil’s play Ah, Wilderness.
Today we go to a ballgame at old Tiger Stadium, in Detroit. Life is good, real, real good. And, MOTOWN, baby, Barry Gordy’s home — Hitsville, USA.