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Posts published in “Essays”

Please Don’t Kill Me

Last year 4,007,908 teachers toiled in our nation’s public schools, 3,197,000 of them in California. The last few years have been rough on students nationwide, what with pandemic lockdowns, distant learning, social-media saturation, and general…

The Shadow Box (Part 1)

Remember that first television appearing in your house in the early 50s?  That tiny screen in the middle of a big clunky cube? Didn’t it look like some sort of oracle in pre-prophecy slumber, an…

For Whom The Book Tolls

My reputation as a brooding intellectual blossomed in junior high then flowered in high school.  It was a period in my life when I hauled around thick books on serious topics by profound authors for…

Diabolical

Is Vladimir Putin a freedom-hating madman bent on conquest regardless of the human cost? Why did he invade Ukraine? The incontrovertible fact is that Putin's action came in response to prior US actions. Without those…

A Land Without Bars

Needing assurance it was still in business, I pushed the Forest Club door open, took a stool and called for a cold can of Coors.  Good choice, this, I told myself.  Last time here I…

Putting The Silicon In Silicon Valley

Picture the following age-old scene: a writer sitting at a kitchen table, pretending to work. Set it 40 years ago. The Reagan/Thatcher Conservatives are in power and everything is broken, but our subject is the…

Ransoming Pagan Babies

There is something to be said for the disadvantages of Catholic education, at least as it was in San Francisco of the logy, foggy 50s. For one thing, in grammar school I learned about ransoming…

Ecstasy

Have you ever taken Ecstasy? Is that what they call “Molly”? I never have, never wanted to, figured I never would, but now I’m wondering. I have a friend living in the boonies far away…

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