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Posts published in “Essays”

The Counterculture That Sprang From San Francisco

Paul McCartney heard rumors of the wild goings-on in the Haight and visited on April 4, 1967. At the Fillmore Auditorium, he listened to a rehearsal by the Jefferson Airplane. At Marty Balin’s and Jack…

Mein Kulturkampf

The increase in AI-generated images of Donald Trump presages yet another crude campaign to extract profits from the MAGA masses. The payoff could be far greater than that yielded by TrumpCoin, and certainly more lucrative…

Down And Almost Out At St. Mary’s Hospital In SF

“The hospital,” George Orwell wrote, “is the antechamber to the tomb.” Orwell knew whereof he spoke. For much of his life he was in and out of hospitals because of serious health issues. For decades,…

Country Living: What Do You Do?

When you move to the country the first question-visiting city friends ask is “What do you do?” To their uninitiated eyes your new home has trees, small animals, sky with the sun in the morning…

A Random Act Of Kindness

Back in the1980s came a bumpersticker that advised us to “Practice Random Acts of Kindness.” It was early virtue signaling, meant less to instruct others in proper behavior, more to cast the car’s driver in…

The Ultimate California Eco-Manifesto

It has now been just over twenty years since a historically reclusive Marin County coastal burg — so reclusive that its name has been deleted here wherever possible, per local and long-futile custom - adopted…

Carolina Codeine Fiends

Had a cough that lasted so long I was going to name it (“Sputum” has a nice ring, plus it’s an olde family name) but first went to the doctor. I picked the right one…

Walter Anderson’s Settlement Of Anderson Valley [1968]

Soon after Henry Beeson was mustered out of the armed forces in the months following the end of the Bear Flag Rebellion in the early 1850s, Watt (Walter) Anderson and his family had settled on…

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