No work of music has a greater lock on a single ritual than Edward Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance March No. 1 does on American graduations.…
Posts published in “Essays”
Judging by Mark Scaramella’s front page article in the June 12th edition of the AVA, mental health issues are still an extremely hot topic in…
Continued from last week’s AVA, the 1937 Congressional hearing at which marijuana prohibition was discussed prior to enactment. The witness is William WOODWARD, MD, representing…
Like an obnoxiously drunk, loudmouthed, long-winded, overly-pleased-with-himself, vacuously ostentatious guest who refuses to leave the party even though it’s long been over, Baz Luhrmann’s The…
One of my great pleasures is to look back over the course of events that brought me to my current relationship with a beloved place or person or thing, and to remember the coincidences and actions and interactions that were key steps in those journeys from there to here, then to now.
On February 22, 1998, Pete Gallagher arrived at Building 13 at Solano State Prison in Vacaville, California. It was Gallagher’s thirteenth year behind bars, and…
We’re only a year removed from Matt Cain’s perfect game. Certainly legions of Giants fans would say this was the finest performance ever by a…
Last week the Santa Rosa Press Democrat ran a story titled, “Winegrowers facing labor hurdles as harvest season approaches.” The story began, “Grape growers and…
There is one supreme and universal law of human relations in all its manifestations, social, political, economic, cultural: people create no end of mischief in…