In those long ago days when I was invited to read from my novels in bookstores and libraries, and for college audiences and writers groups, I was frequently asked if I had any helpful advice for people who wanted to become writers and make their livings from writing.
Posts published in “Essays”
From her obituaries, and the serious critical assessments of her work, I hardly recognize the Doris Lessing I knew. I don’t fault the obit writers…
Friday, November 22, was going to be my last day of civilian employment in Manhattan, barring a miracle. I was supposed to start basic training…
With the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination just around the corner, we can expect the media to be inundated with solemn remembrances, first-person recollections,…
The county’s upcoming district attorney election will have a new dynamic now that incumbent Humboldt County DA Paul Gallegos has announced that he won’t be…
In the fall of 2013, a common question emerges inescapably from the news: “Where were you when Kennedy was killed?” Me? I was delivering cans…
Grace Espinoza was one of the first people I met in Anderson Valley. We sang together in the community chorus, but I didn’t have a…
As most of you probably know, the 49ers lost to the Carolina Panthers on November 10th in Candlestick Park on a sunny San Francisco day.…
I was curious to see this creation that someone, ostensibly a human being, paid 142 million dollars for, and when I found the image online and made the triptych large and clear on my computer screen, I was surprised by how unremarkable I found this work to be. I’m sure there are academics and art experts galore who can babble at length about why “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” painted by Francis Bacon in 1969 is of great importance in the history and evolution of modern art, but to my eyes this is yet another case of the emperor’s new clothes, as opposed to innovative, revolutionary, or masterful art.
I was on my way to eighth grade math class, in the makeshift middle school in Dixon, in Solano County (four years after my family…
What interested me more than Russell Brand's essay itself was the backlash that Brand and people on the Left who support his political stance received from elite Academic Leftists and insulated politically correct Secular Leftists.