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Posts published in “Essays”

HumCo’s $3.5 mil Psych Staff Contract

Facing the loss of psychiatric services staff in the county’s Mental Health Branch, the Board of Supervisors has approved a one-year contract with a firm that recruits and hires psychiatrists. The $3.5 million contract with…

A Historical Neurosis

My parents moved to Connecticut when I was eight years old, and it was the suburbs. And suburbs were new then. Levittown had been built when... in the '40's, '47? ... and this was a brand-new suburban subdivision called the Highlands. My parents bought a house, and everything seemed okay except that there was a part of me that immediately felt something was definitely wrong there.

St. Patrick’s Day

Spring has finally returned to the Ohio Valley. Iris and daffodil bulbs are sending forth chutes, and the wheat fields turning emerald green. Just like the rest of America, I always associated green with St.…

The Stony Lonesome: Heart Of Glass (Beach)

CAUTION! DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN! You see the signs up and down the Mendocino Coast, wherever land, people and sea interface; often, the signs are accompanied by grisly descriptions of hapless…

No Knees Kelley

Recently I was asked, “When ya gonna write somethin' positive?” Answer: When I get sick and tired of watching reruns of the black and white episodes of The Andy Griffith Show and Shameless. Shameless is…

Please Vaccinate

Dear Parents (and others), We write as concerned health professionals and community members. Our topic: Vaccination, or lack thereof, and risks to our health. The urge to protect one’s children is one of the strongest…

Hey Nineteen

Digging around for photos of my grandmother, I came across a black and white picture of me taken in 1969, a still shot from a student film made during my second and final year of college at UC Santa Cruz—when tuition was next to nothing. My decision to quit college was made easier than it would be today because housing in 1969 was cheap, work was easy to come by, and the economic obstacles to experimenting with being an artist were minimal, certainly compared to the economic realities of 2015.

Graham Nash’s Sound & Vision

For a few years in the 1970s, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were America's Beatles — the most popular rock “supergroup” of them all, known widely as “CSNY.” And Graham Nash was the band's George…

Cyber Romance

And so ends my experience with the online personals: I must've contacted at least 150 women from all over the West Coast in their 40's and I don't know if its my location, age, looks,…

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