Most artists are unknown or little known outside their neighborhood or town or small circle of friends. This is not a bad or good thing, but merely the way of the world. My favorite poets are known to only a handful of people, and many of the finest musicians and painters and actors I’ve had the good fortune to hear and see will never be known outside the little kingdoms inhabited by their personal friends and acquaintances.
Posts published in “Essays”
There is an old adage about the cobbler's children going unshod that makes me wonder what trade or profession, if any, breeds the most problematic…
Governor Jerry Brown has signed the package of bills known as the Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act. The very name implies that the herb is…
Apropos of the recent Roseburg, Oregon, school massacre that left nine dead, President Obama said, “We’re going to have to come together and stop these…
I read with interest the online comment on growing up with the simple pleasures of small town Ohio in the 50s and 60s. Real eggs,…
Sometimes the museum where I docent gets a donation that opens my eyes with amazement. The “Family Worksheets” for six months from late 1949 into…
Californians have just won a right that we all hope we will never need to use: The right to physician-assisted dying. Governor Jerry Brown signed…
As the Panthers made the two-plus hour journey to the “wilds” of western Sonoma County to play Tomales last Wednesday afternoon, they were looking to…
Living in Southern California, you get used to humans visiting atrocities and depredations on one another. What else would you expect from a region that…
We just returned, Marcia and I, from a nine-day journey to Oregon, our motive operandi a visit to my brother and his wife in their new digs in Portland, they among the wave of humanity crashing onto Portland, which is now the fastest growing urban area in these United States. We stayed in Gold Beach and Yachats on the Oregon coast on the way up, two nights in the Portland manse with mein brudder und his wife, a night in Eugene with friends on the banks of the Willamette, two nights at the lodge at Crater Lake, a night with friends in Arcata and…
Nearing mid-October and no end in sight to this drought. The etymological root of the word drought takes us back to the old, Old English…