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Posts published in “Essays”

The Bullshit Invitation

Hey, my friends, feel free to spend some time at my place in Mexico, sure, anytime I'm not there. This is what's known as a bullshit invitation as it's not easy to get to and…

My Life As A Rabbi [2003]

Asked to a recent wedding in Virginia (it was a family affair on a grand scale), the proud parents asked if I would do some sort of officiation. It would be my second inning in…

Assignment: Ukiah – California Stupid, And How I Got It

Down South people think all Californians are either gay or work in Hollywood; we forgive them as they forgive us for believing all southerners are racist, uneducated redneck brutes. Caricatures of our fellow citizens are…

The Great Homo Hunt Of 1998

Official Mendocino County is awfully slow to adjust to contemporary realities, as the startling ordeal of a gay Ukiah man named Marc Tosca illustrates. In December of 1990, Tosca and his late partner, Harry Kirkpatrick,…

Practicing The Past

Often when I practice the organ I’m immersed in the immediacy of each successive moment of music-making. Act and sound conjoin in the uninterrupted present. The best concert performances remain in that heightened state, but…

The Rise And Fall Of The Marijuana Industry

How did we go from hippies sucking on the Green Nipple in the Roaring Eighties to the scene today with large legal pot plantations, surviving mainly by breaking the rules and selling weed on the…

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