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Posts published in “Essays”

A Couple of Truths: Tuli Is Better Off Dead

Tuli Kupferberg is better off dead. My friend and countercultural icon had been suffer­ing from a couple of strokes, hospitals, breathing tubes, feeding tubes, anemia, infections, blindness, catheter, hearing aids, wheelchairs, psychosis, memory loss, dia­pers,…

Culture of Narcissism

“Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathol­ogy, which express in exaggerated form its under­lying character structure.” — Christopher Lasch A few weeks before my second novel was to be pub­lished in 1980, I…

Mooney & Billings: Framed!

It was an unusually hot July day in San Francisco. There was a parade on that day in 1916 — a “Prepared­ness Day” parade organized by local Republican businessmen. It was intended to drum up…

The Greatest Story Never Told, Continued

A San Francisco Chronicle reporter named Kevin Fagan called on Monday, July 12, to get some quotes. He explained his angle: NIDA and the prohibitionists cite studies showing that marijuana is harmful, while “the pot…

Serious Questions

So on the way home from picking my boy up from hanging out with his dad this evening, we're driving through Fort Bragg.  The car is packed because we're leaving on a climbing trip to…

The Boonville Art Walk

Celebrating his first anniversary in Boonville, this reporter strolled the 14th Annual Boonville Art Walk last Saturday, July 10th. The day was sunny and hot with about six knots of welcome cool winds gusting intermittently…

A Load Of Bull

No, no. It's not what you may think. This is a story told by my father about an experience he had while he was in college at UC Davis. It was 1928 and my grandfather,…

They Got Teddy! Drop the Bong!

The news took less time to filter through the crowd of over 500 than the spark from a spliff filled with Bell Springs Blue Dream picked up by the cool afternoon breezes that meander through…

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