It has been a cold, cold December by California standards, though by the time this is read nighttime temperatures should return to seasonal norms. What is abnormal is the lack of autumn rainfall. Walking upstream…
Posts published in “Essays”
Listening now to Enrico Caruso’s last recording made in September of 1920, you would never suspect that you are hearing the voice of a heavy smoker. Caruso favored strong Egyptian cigarettes, even enjoying them between…
Dear Hiroshi, I’ll see you soon in Kochi on Shikoku, southern Japanese main island; most beautiful, least populated, mostly agrarian, putatively “lightly” bombed during WW II. Shikoku, the birthplace of revered 9th Century Shingon Buddhist…
Sunday an hour before kick-off, Niners vs Seattle, I’m on the sideline behind the Seahawk bench. A few players for both teams are on the field, running practice routes, playing soft toss, punting balls high…
Praised by some as the summation of Robert Redford’s distinguished acting career, his latest film begins without music, just the stillness of a calm sea at dawn, the wide-screen expanse bathed in myriad shades of…
Before she was a victim of homicide, Susan Keegan was a victim of emotional abuse.
When we think about domestic violence, we tend to think about physical harm, but a victim can also be the target of verbal aggression, manipulative behavior, and deliberate efforts to humiliate or belittle. Contempt is often part of that package, with the abuser mocking or insulting his partner, demeaning her appearance, demanding obedience, even becoming enraged when chores are not done as requested. Sex may become a weapon — for example, when an abuser insists that marriage itself entitles him to sex where, when, and how he wants it.
You remember, I’m sure, that time you went to a party with no great expectation of anything beyond munching and drinking and blah-dee-blah, and you met someone with whom you had phenomenal rapport, so much…
The Emerald Cup, the sprawling Cannabis festival launched in Laytonville by Tim Blake in 2004, will be held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds this weekend, and Dennis Peron is getting a lifetime achievement award. The marijuana legalization movement would not have achieved its great breakthrough in 1996 without Dennis, the founder and maitre’d of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club. Proposition 215, which legalized the herb for medical use in California, was a collective effort, but Dennis was the indispensable organizer.