Contraception exploded onto the front pages in February. That might seem strange to most people — what is controversial about contraception at this late date? One headline read “Changes to Contraceptive Coverage Rules Draw Mixed…
Posts published in “Essays”
Those frightening sounds, sights, and odors on the wind this foreboding snowless winter — like emanations from some back ward of a global psychiatric hospital - are the signs of a nation going completely mad.…
Surely Rick Santorum is the most fanatical Christian to run for the Republican nomination in the modern era, maybe any era. Next to him Pat Robertson, billionaire founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, who ran…
The inevitable lawsuit contesting the brutal pepper spraying of UC Davis students last fall was filed on Wednesday, February 22. Seventeen students and two recent graduates, represented by the ACLU of Northern California and cooperating…
I recently read a brief rave review of a new movie, not a remake, but the umpteenth “psychological thriller” about a psychopath keeping someone trapped in a closet for years on end. And this review, which sounded suspiciously like a press release, reminded me of one of the more bizarre and disturbing passages in my long ago Hollywood sojourn when I tried to succeed as a screenwriter. But first a little of the back-story, as they like to call the past in the movie business.
Few spectacles have been more surreal than senior US officials — starting with the President, the Secretary of State and the US ambassador to the UN — solemnly lecturing Assad and his beleaguered Syrian government…
A striking letter just appeared in the Wall Street Journal signed by 38 leading climate scientists from around the world. They strongly protested a previous opinion piece in the same paper titled “No Need to…
The terrace at the Presbyterian in Mendocino can be a wonderful place to sit and read and write and eat a snack, especially on a sunny day. From every bench one has a view of either the ocean sparkling in the distance or of the stately white church with its impressive shingled spire.
People’s paths cross endlessly as they make their brief journeys through this world, but only occasionally do eyes meet and sparks fly. Even less often, the two paths will course together for a distance, and…