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Posts published in “Essays”

The Stony Lonesome: Suicide

There’s nothing funny about suicide, unfortunately; one cannot employ humor to mitigate the horror, not and remain within the bounds of humanity and good taste.…

Almond Acreage Booms 

The drought has reduced California’s water supply to an all-time low, prompting officials to mandate strict cutbacks in urban communities. Farmers, who went unaffected by…

Trust

Trust is a tricky thing. Long ago, I held writing workshops for groups of eight people meeting for two hours once a week in my living room, each course lasting eight weeks. At the outset, I would reiterate what I had explained to prospective participants when they called to sign up for the process: we would be doing my original writing exercises and there would be no lecturing or criticism or analysis of anything we wrote, by me or anyone in the group, and no one had to read aloud anything he or she wrote unless he or she wanted to.

The National Pasttime

June 24th brings us to one of the littlest known stories about major league baseball. It began in Ipswich, County Suffolk, England in 1854, on…

Flycatchers

The Pacific-slope Flycatchers who entrusted a corner of this ranch house for their nest have fledged their baby Flycatchers and moved on, leaving behind a…

Why Reggae?

What's your favorite type of music? Chances are it's from the time you were young, probably even a teenager. This is likely due not just…

The Hide Ride

When my daughter was getting a divorce a while ago I sent my grandson a pup tent and told him to go sleep in the…

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