Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Essays”

Scholar Jim

I wonder how Mark Twain would feel if he knew his novel Huckleberry Finn has been rewritten in such a way that the meaning of his book is entirely changed, and that such an execrable mutation of his work is about to be afflicted on the next generation of American schoolchildren.

Something Had to Give

Six dead and Gabrielle Giffords, a 40-year old congresswoman hanging to life by a thread. In the wake of the lethal fusillade in Tucson Republicans came close to confessing to complicity by reason of incitement.…

Fake Grit

With their re-make of True Grit the Coens have shot and stuffed the original animal: so often, in the sights of big game hunters, the Western species refuses to go extinct.

Grateful for the Dead

The Grateful Dead? Those guys and their fanatic, tie-died, permanently stoned followers? The band that made interminable music which a noted poet and writer I reviewed for the San Francisco Chronicle called “unspeakable, self-indulgent dreck”?…

Recommended Reading

Catch/Release by David Ollier Weber, lately of Comptche presently of Placerville. A novel set here in the Emerald Triangle's most exciting outback venues, mostly along the Mina Road running between Covelo and Alderpoint, Catch/Release begins,…

Outrageous Fortune

Physically, psychically, and in every other way my thesaurus can describe, Oak Street in downtown Eugene is a very long way from the nearest killing field. This has been true since the folks who arrived…

-