My good buddy Taylor Stoehr just died and I’ve been leafing through the bulging file of his letters to me, reading passages at random and marveling at the clarity of his prose and the generosity of his spirit.
Posts published in “Essays”
Editor: My name is William Joseph Newport CDCR#K14307, aka “Bongo Bill.” This letter has been a long time coming. I was a homeless man who…
Technology rules our lives, or rather, those who develop and sell it want us to believe that. Those who are peddling all manner of genetic…
A year ago this week I wrote about a then obscure independently produced documentary called Searching for Sugar Man, about a Detroit singer/songwriter who disappeared…
Marcia and I had breakfast on Wednesday morning at Ravens’, the wholly vegan restaurant at the Stanford Inn, our meal courtesy of a gift certificate Marcia received for officiating at a wedding. I especially enjoyed the coffee and orange juice and the view of Big River Beach.
Disruption was once a theory of social change that inspired the radical Left. In the 1970s scholars like Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward developed…
Next to Ali, I’d be willing to bet that James Brown is the most widely known Afro-American in the world. There are probably teenage Japanese…
MEMO OF THE WEEK Mendocino County Fire Chiefs' Association President: Larry Tunzi; Vice President: Mike Suddith, Secretary/Treasurer: Jeff Schlafer PO Box 164, Comptche, CA 95427…
I've got a friend Chris who's a skydiver. A legitimate one. He goes skydiving every Sunday in Lodi/Acampo at the Parachute Center. I've got a…
This week’s US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Conflicts between State and Federal Marijuana Laws" will get infinitely more media attention than the July 12,…
About 160,000 people in the Sacramento area are uninsured even though they could be signed up for the state’s low-income healthcare plan, Medi-Cal. Instead, they…