Last week I completed a class I never intended on taking. In fact, I have been running from that whole sector of the academic world for half my life. I even transferred to obscure colleges…
Posts published in “Essays”
“When we express our true nature, we are human beings. When we do not, we do not know what we are.” — Shunryu Suzuki Planting sugar snap pea seeds yesterday, I was thrilled to find…
Paris was not as he dreamed Rebellion was not as it seemed Witness to a ravaged whore His mother pounding at his door Ignoring her as his mind burned Poor heart dribbles at the stern…
Slim, bespectacled Jean Jacques Brun was pouring a modernly designed 2009 Brun Avril magnum that was cork tainted — i.e. smelled of bleach. I was his first taster of the afternoon and he eyeballed my…
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” That line from John Ford’s film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance proves apt for tales of the Old West time and again. The shootout between feuding…
Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, is back in the news in an article in today’s Sacramento Bee about the increase in steam injection oil drilling permits since Governor Jerry Brown…
“Humor is just another defense against the universe.” — Mel Brooks Once upon a time, so many years ago it might have been another lifetime, I got two kittens, a boy and girl, and after…
Chen Guangchen, the Chinese human rights activist, got four separate articles in the New York Times for May 5. Jane Perlez and Michael Wines reported from Beijing on the deal that would get Chen and…
For ten years, Abe Schoener has been recording the unfolding history of California’s climate and geology — but he is not a government scientist drawing sedimentary core samples from the Earth or a hydrologist taking…