On the 4th of July, 1826, America celebrated the 50th anniversary of her Independence. John Adams, the second President of the United States, died on that day at the age of 90. His last words…
Posts published in “Essays”
Regard the Greek political landscape and how dramatically it has changed from last November. On November 2, 2011, Greek prime minister George Papandreou flew to Cannes before a G20 meeting and received one of the…
I’ve spent the last year schlepping the film from Liverpool to Amsterdam, from Bruges to Istanbul, and from Trivandrum City in India to the glittering emptiness of paparazzi flash bulbs in Cannes. But that’s nothing compared to driving to Point Arena from Boonville on a hot day in June.
Unattended birds usually don't ride the bus, but they got on the 33 that day. Muni's 33 Stanyan line gets you a better look, faster, at The City than all the tour lines put together.…
Three days ago I was settling down on the living room sofa for a much-anticipated afternoon nap, when a bird smacked into one of the seven big windows that make our living room feel so light and airy. Alas, this sickening thud usually presages a dead bird or one so stunned that our cat, if he can get outside in time, makes short work of. And so it was with some trepidation that I got up to look out the various windows to see what I could see.
Without music, life would be an error. — Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900 Music (and other) geeks tend to make “best of” lists, sometimes every year. A few years back, I was asked by a now-defunct publication…
(AVA June, 1996.) In-Service Training by Richard Carlson The legislature determined that we needed uplifting and sensitizing, so five or six days a year — the dreaded SIP days (Student Improvement Program) — we went to…
Now We Are Six When I was one, I had just begun. When I was two, I was nearly new. When I was three, I was hardly me. When I was four, I was not…
A heart in love will decipher every squiggle in a letter as a kiss. In the final days of the 2008 campaign and in the opening ones of his administration, Obama and his top legal…