From her obituaries, and the serious critical assessments of her work, I hardly recognize the Doris Lessing I knew. I don’t fault the obit writers (I used to be one) or critics and admirers for…
Posts published in “Essays”
Friday, November 22, was going to be my last day of civilian employment in Manhattan, barring a miracle. I was supposed to start basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, on Sunday the 24th. I had…
With the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination just around the corner, we can expect the media to be inundated with solemn remembrances, first-person recollections, and extravagant revisionism. Alas, every heavy-duty plot and whacked-out account…
The county’s upcoming district attorney election will have a new dynamic now that incumbent Humboldt County DA Paul Gallegos has announced that he won’t be in it. In a Nov. 20 press release, Gallegos said…
In the fall of 2013, a common question emerges inescapably from the news: “Where were you when Kennedy was killed?” Me? I was delivering cans of paint to a store for UPS, a seasonal job…
Grace Espinoza was one of the first people I met in Anderson Valley. We sang together in the community chorus, but I didn’t have a chance to talk with her until we sat next to…
As most of you probably know, the 49ers lost to the Carolina Panthers on November 10th in Candlestick Park on a sunny San Francisco day. Carolina does have a superb defense but their offense, not…
I was curious to see this creation that someone, ostensibly a human being, paid 142 million dollars for, and when I found the image online and made the triptych large and clear on my computer screen, I was surprised by how unremarkable I found this work to be. I’m sure there are academics and art experts galore who can babble at length about why “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” painted by Francis Bacon in 1969 is of great importance in the history and evolution of modern art, but to my eyes this is yet another case of the emperor’s new clothes, as opposed to innovative, revolutionary, or masterful art.