Hello, good evening and welcome everyone to our annual celebration of ourselves and our self worth and our goals and achievements. But first of all, to start things off, let’s stand, all of you! —…
Posts published in “Essays”
A friend nearly fell off her scuffed-up Birkenstocks when I told her I admired Marjorie Taylor Greene. Given the appalled horror of her response, I feared the fatal rupture of our decades-long friendship. No, I…
There is no understanding 20th century America without being acquainted with the nation’s mid-century interstate highway expansion. The massive cross-country freeway linkage was the crowning achievement of President Eisenhower’s eight years in office, and has…
Three Short Geographic Sequential Portraits Illustrating the Universal Monotony Of All History I (Quang Tri, Republic of Vietnam, 1967) In the ditch right side of the road going west near Cam Lo one hardened (as…
Hildegard Knef would have celebrated her 100th birthday on December 28 just passed. Given the number of cigarettes she smoked (Marlboros, three packs a day), the years she spent addicted to morphine (nearly twenty) as…
I'm back from Dominica and Grenada and the trip was easy and fun. I flew LA-NYC-San Juan, Puerto Rico-Dominica. On the flight down the two-engine propeller plane ran low on fuel and we had to…
I want words that leave cinders, curls of smoke rising from black ash, words without paper, words that set desks afire, burn holes in doors, melt & shatter vaults, the eyes of buildings — molten…
2025: The year that tried very diligently to take me out, silence me, and put me in my place. Perceived place, that is. There are some who desire my presence to be diminished, shamed, and…
Going back further than any of us can remember we have listened to political candidates telling us in loud, plain, repetitive language that their Number One priority is to bring good jobs to Ukiah and…