“Take the back roads instead of the highway.”
Minnie Pearl was right. If you want to take the pulse of America, forsake the interstates of commerce and the stately boulevards where the big shots live. Try a back road to see what’s what.
Posts published in “Essays”
"Nixon's Drug War Was (and Still is) a Racist Tool to Disrupt and Neutralize Black Communities" was the headline of an article published this week by Melissa Franqui, communications director of the Drug Policy Alliance.…
The road out of Gualala, at least the road I chose, climbed from a pleasant creekbottom, cooled by tall trees and damp breezes, abruptly and continuously uphill for several miles. It doesn't matter how many,…
As it does on some days in the Richmond District, the 12:00 o’clock siren is blowing, and it reminds me of the daily siren at noon in the small town I was raised in on Long Island. My grandfather, a hardworking German immigrant who farmed after retirement, would put down his hoe and walk back to his bungalow, where my grandmother had lunch ready.
"Guns don't kill people," said my opponent in the "debate." "People kill people." He delivered the kicker with a self-satisfied smirk and held out his fist for some appreciative dap from his homey for the…
Reading Kim by Rudyard Kipling for the tenth time in the last twenty-five years, I’ve been thinking about why this novel and no other of the thousands I’ve read calls to me again and again, and why, again and again, I am enthralled from first word to last.
My first real job might have been the best I ever had. Armed with a brand-new first driver's license, I delivered groceries and booze to the stars. Or, at least, a couple of them. Besides John Wayne, for example, there was Ozzie and Harriett Nelson.