Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Essays”

Return To The Emerald Triangle

Contrary to Thomas Wolfe’s dictum, you can indeed go home again. It’s just that there’s no guarantee home will be anything like the way you left it, if in fact it’s still there at all.…

America Enters A New Time

I went to get my hair cut the other day in the town of Fortuna and waited ten minutes while the elderly barber finished buzz-cutting a young Mexican American. After the young man had exited…

Pardon Me, President Obama: Or Not, As Recent Reports Show

One of Barack Obama’s campaign slogans as he ran for President two years ago was, “The change we need.” Unfortunately, for those in the Federal Criminal Justice System, this change has proven to be the…

The Bus Leaves At Four, Charles

When I got the news I was in Paris, sitting in the sil­ver rain outside Notre Dame. We were filming a street performer dressed in flowing red robes and on stilts. Sort of like you,…

Hopes Dimming: The Predicament of ShoreBank

The Obama Administration’s treatment of its current majority ownership of bailed out General Motors and its standoffishness toward the pioneering but troubled ShoreBank, a community bank based in Chicago, are les­sons in how the Big/Bad…

Taurus Trouble

Last week, almost one year to the day after I pur­chased my latest vehicle, the odometer turned over to 30,000 miles. Well, it is a green display light that changed to 30,000 miles. Saying it…

Psychic Leeches

“The truth is not ashamed of appearing contrived.” — Isaac Bashevis Singer The other night I caught the last 20 minutes of a spiri­tual talk show. My initial positive reaction to the guest speaker morphed…

Did John Adams Save The Day?

Before I Am Love, directed by Luca Gaudagnino and released into American movie theaters this summer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer John Adams had never written a soundtrack. In a way he still hasn’t, since…

-