For those of us lucky enough to live here in The Valley one of the enjoyable pieces of reminiscence among friends and neighbors is the “who was the first hippie” discussion. The first settler, the…
Posts published in “Essays”
I hadn’t seen Natalie for a couple of years before her death. More and more, she was a no-show at family gatherings, and in any case avoided my then-husband’s harsh judgments and preachy, unwelcome advice…
A tiny bacteria or even tinier virus gets into a flea, who jumps onto a rat, who sneaks onto a boat and then off into a new city, and changes the course of human history…
Senator Dianne Feinstein had told Terence Hallinan bluntly after he was elected district attorney in November ‘95 that “we” would not let it happen again. He assumed that DiFi’s “we” meant San Francisco’s and/or the Democratic…
Here it is the middle of a heat wave and all I can think of, aside from my tomato plants, is a cold cold Christmas when I was in jail. I should have known it…
Berkeley, CA July 13, 2020 — When you’re in the midst of what seems to be a historically notable period, it’s very difficult to tell what that “midst” is. Or how long it will last…
Most late afternoons or evenings I walk down a half mile of hillside to the bottomland next to the Albion River to check on the cows. They provide a bit of Cow-vid entertainment almost daily: a…