Whenever the first days of August arrive I think of Uncle Leonard. Actually, Leonard Roy Ward was my great uncle, Mother’s side. He was born at the dawn of the twentieth century and by the time Pearl Harbor brought the US into World War II, Leonard had lived several lifetimes full of adventure as a gambler and rodeo cowboy.
Posts published in “Essays”
Maitreya is coming to save us. Maitreya? In a word, God; the new god, the god running the UFOs and drawing crop circles and doing a lot of other stuff that modern science has not…
I must admit, I was a fair bit convinced. The preacher had miracles and apostles. His miracles were not indisputable, but they were photographed: images of crop circles and weird-looking things in the sky, videos…
Soon after I began writing these vignettes of my time in Anderson Valley from the late 1950s to the late 1980s I discovered the Anderson Valley 4-H Club no longer existed. I was surprised, but…
Seattle’s first retail outlet for marijuana opened in July, some 20 months after Washington state voters passed Initiative 502. Legalization as defined by I-502 is now becoming real — but it doesn’t apply to people…
What’s a riot without looting? We want it, they’ve got it! You’d think from the press that looting was alien to British tradition, imported by immigrants more recent than the Normans. Not so.
When I was in my early thirties, I lived on a monthly disability check from the state: $268. My rent for a small room in a boarding house in a scary neighborhood in downtown Sacramento…