Well, that's a mistake I hope I never make again: I left a marking pen in a shirt pocket in the wash and now I have black ink stains on my clothes. What to do,…
Posts published in “Essays”
Went to a funeral in Ukiah and most attendees were leaning heavily toward 80 years old. Don’t know how many made it back home from the services, but a lot of them looked due for…
There is a widely held view that Los Angeles simply went out to the Owens Valley and stole its water. In a technical sense, that isn’t quite true. Everything the city did was legal (though…
“What're you doing down here on Skid Row, Willie! Did your old man finally kick you out?” “No, I'm still living at home. I've got a job down here in a winery. It's just a…
If you have the time, and the cavalry has all the time in the world, there's no better way to learn how to ride a horse than the cavalry way. Horses are big, and they…
Louis Armstrong’s trumpet sighs and pleads in counterpoint with the airport announcements. The melody is barely audible but still unmistakable above the thunderous whisper of a thousand four-wheeled suitcases rolling across granite floors, the centripetal…
The sixties was the decade when the frightened cry of “Timber!” was everywhere in the unclean air of publishing. The flow of competitive daily newspapers dried up, and magazines great and small fell like the…