Last Wednesday, September 23, the AV Panthers traveled south to Santa Rosa for the first of a number of season-defining matches. this one against five-time defending regular-season champions, Roseland Prep. These games have always been…
Posts published in “Essays”
Ever since I first saw the Mauch twins, Billy and Bobby, in the movie version of Mark Twain’s Prince and the Pauper, I’ve been keen on films where the actor plays a multiple role, like…
Hunters Point, home to the last peninsula based losers in the lottery of class warfare, is a world away from the rolling hills and rampant overconsumption of Napa and its environs. The folks who call…
It was a good day. I had busted ass. The pool sparkled. The Tennis court was swept and the proscribed factory sealed tennis balls were set out ready for use. The 1/2 acre of lawn…
Marine Corps veterans have formed their own suicide-prevention network for reasons laid out in a very powerful article by Dave Philipps in the New York Times Sept. 20. The men Philipps writes about served in…
I and a brace of the core members of my retinue were passing a Friday evening in a most pleasant fashion, quaffing cocktails and partaking of various deep-fried morsels at TW's, the bar at the…
Perfect or near-perfect matches between author and subject are rare, indeed, in the world of publishing. Jay Parini’s Empire of Self, a new biography of Gore Vidal, is one of them. A long-time biographer as…
Just after going to print last week, on Monday, September 14, the Panthers hosted Cloverdale in a match that, despite being a non-league game (the last one of the season), had significance for three reasons.…
Ganesha, also known as Ganapati and Vinakaya, is the male Hindu god with a human body and head of an elephant. His Rubensesque androgynous form is most often represented with four arms, each arm with a five-fingered hand, though some drawings and statues of Ganesha have as few as two arms and as many as twenty. Revered as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences, and the deva of intellect and wisdom, he is also the patron deity of writers.