If the organ is the King of Instruments, its monarchy is built on deception. The largest, most technologically complicated, most tonally diverse, and most visually stunning of musical objects, the organ was often held to…
Posts published in “Essays”
History tells us that one of the few times somebody actually successfully brought corporate monopolies to heel, it was President Teddy Roosevelt. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, the ol’ Roughrider…
News that Dick’s Bar in the very quaint Village of Mendocino has closed down surprised me only because I had assumed it had disappeared a decade or more ago, transformed into an art gallery, a…
The report to President Nixon submitted on June 11th 1971 by the U. S. Tariff Commission considered the petition of the “Pipe Organ Workers Federal Labor Union, AFL-CIO, with the assistance of the United Furniture…
Dinner parties were quite the thing back in the ‘80s. Women were entering corporate jobs en masse and medical honchos were trumpeting the dubious notion that wine was the new health elixir. Bottoms up! We…
"Stealing From the Rich: The Home-Stake Oil Swindle" by David C. McClintick (Evans, 1977) recounts how a Tulsa, Oklahoma lawyer named Robert Trippet masterminded the most lucrative Ponzi scheme of the 20th century. (Bernie Madoff…
The news that Silicon Valley titans have quietly purchased over 50,000 rural acres in Solano County to build a new city called California Forever has gripped public attention since it appears to offer a way…
Gallup, N.M. April, 2001— Drive across the United States, mostly on Interstate 40, and you have plenty of time to listen to the radio. Even more time than usual if, to take my own situation,…