Friday I emerged from bed a couple hours after noon, made a pot of tea and went out back to toss a loaf of cheap ass white bread to the five hens and one cock…
Posts published in “Essays”
What does spending $100 billion over the last ten years get you? It gets one huge, bloated, ineffectual agency of government — the NSA (National Security Agency). While the actual budget of this spy apparatus…
Ithaca, New York — I live between a gorge and a cemetery, a position that often gets me to thinking about the fleeting nature of life. The gorge to our south began forming a mere 10,000…
We were having supper with friends recently, and somehow the conversation came around to Shakespeare and the news that a number of American universities have dropped the Bard entirely from their lists of required courses for English majors. And the question was asked, “Why should Shakespeare be required reading for English majors in this age of tweeting and texting and unedited garbage topping the bestseller lists and the English language disintegrating faster than the earth is warming?
Yesterday San Francisco’s politicians announced that Google, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies will be charged for the use of the city’s bus stops. Until yesterday the private buses, untold numbers of them, enter the…
Charles Mallory Hatfield was certainly the most successful person to practice the art of pluviculture, or artificial rainmaking. Born in Kansas but raised in southern California, Hatfield first gained broad public acclaim when, in 1904, he climbed to the top of Mt. Lowe and released a secret mixture of chemicals into the air.
Last autumn, I received permission to harvest apples from our neighbor’s tree. I had no idea what variety they were; they looked a bit like Gravensteins, but ripened later and were not very good eaten…
Do you believe that your contributions are really helping the less fortunate? Do you want to know where the tax dollars and honorable contributions for the needy are really going? Have you been told that there are plenty of services, programs, and much help given to the impoverished people in your community? I asked these same questions and would like to share my experience with you.