Does it seem like more and more of the homeless are accompanied by a dog or dogs? The City of San Francisco has just initiated a program that pairs the homeless with abandoned puppies. The…
Posts published in “Essays”
Just under a century ago, following the carnage of WWI, an influenza pandemic swept over much of the planet, killing over 50 million people — more than three times the number killed in the war itself. Soldiers and others moving around globally were a crucial factor in the spread of the flu virus, even though transportation was nowhere near as efficient and far-reaching as it is today.
Last night by the fire, our new (old) house enshrouded in dense fog, I said to Marcia that I didn't feel we were on the land where this house sits but rather on a boat, or possibly a raft, floating somewhere on the ocean of existence.
110 maxims about civility and decent behavior in public which originated in the late 16th century in France were popularly circulated in Virginia during George Washington's boyhood in the first half of the 18th century.…
Two days, two hours each day re-dialing, letting the phone ring at the French Laundry. Finally a voice at the other end. A recorded voice anyway, telling me how to go about making a reservation at the French Laundry.
Writers and filmmakers have long liked apocalyptic stories. In the last century the dominant cause of the end of humanity became a nuclear holocaust, but a giant asteroid hitting Earth has also been popular. And then there are those pesky zombies. That's science fiction — so far — but out in the real world, it might well be that the most likely cause of our specie's demise will be a microscopic bug we cannot defeat, and that we vanish, or vastly diminish, not with a bang but a whimper.
The conventional wisdom is that marijuana prohibition was first imposed early in the 20th century in the southwestern United States by sheriffs seeking to increase their power over Mexican immigrants. Stories of marijuana use leading…
“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” —…
Is your kid’s school accredited? Of course it is. And of course you assume the solemn-sounding word represents an educational licensing process overseen by scholarly people deployed to carry out a complicated…