Media coverage of Kelly Gissendaner’s execution in the small hours of Wednesday morning stressed the apparent anomalies of an act that, in this country, is hardly anomalous: that she was first woman to be killed…
Posts published in “Essays”
Baseball season is again winding down, and it's not looking real promising for the home team. While not yet "mathematically eliminated," as I write this it appears that, barring a fairly unlikely series of improbably…
Most families have a code these days, to protect the sanctity of shared holiday meals and allow the normally inane conversations at these events to proceed according to expectation. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t talk…
1972. Santa Cruz. Never enough money. I was working days as a gardener, nights playing music. My girlfriend was a waitress and house cleaner. Rent was cheap but wages were negligible.
Continuing the mildly fictionalized saga of young Les Ford in Mendocino County a hundred ten years or so ago, here is a second excerpt from the opening chapter of the novel Outlaw Ford: * *…
The year is 1985. Reagan has just been reelected, but Republican fortunes across the country are waning. The Gipper was beginning to show his incapacities and the party itself seemed just as hoary. The hunt was…
A recent item in the Off The Record section of this-here publication stated that a certain group of Supervisors approved the disbursement of a big ol' chunk of dough, nearly 100 large, to the Hospitality…
Early Mendocino County is filled with many yarns and tales. One of the characters in Outlaw Ford (the novel excerpted here) states, “Sometimes you have to lie to get at the truth.” That's more or…
Even at this late date in the arc of my life, I am occasionally invited to speak to high school kids about the career path of a writer. When I explain to those soliciting me to speak that I am not a journalist or a non-fiction writer or a writer of murder mysteries or bodice rippers or young adult dystopian vampire novellas, but rather a writer of unclassifiable fiction and essays, and I further explain that I don’t recommend my career path to anyone because that would be to recommend working long hours seven days a week for five decades, my wages paltry and unreliable. After such an explanation, the invitations are withdrawn.