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Posts published in “Essays”

October in Spain 2016

The leaves on the trees in Retiro Park in Madrid are turning burnt orange and brown, the umbrellas are in hand. Autumn is here and…

HumCo Forum Explores Mental Illness, Incarceration

A panel of mental health, probation and law enforcement officials has called on the community to support programs that avoid using the criminal justice system…

Kay Starr

As unhip as it may sound — until you really listen to her voice and get past some of the cornier material and arrangements —…

Sailing Out Of Willits (Part 2)

Just woke up from a short siesta in my bunk where the air is so stale and still it rubs against my body when I move…cruising feels like this constant state of recovering from the flu. It can make you feel so lethargic, and I’m spending too much time on my back, not to mention my ass!

Bob Kevin Culture

For a few weeks this past summer people kept asking me what I thought about Kevin Durant deciding to leave Oklahoma City to come to California and play for the Golden State Warriors, and lately people keep asking me what I think about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Now that the basketball season has officially begun, the Kevin Durant question has resurfaced, and yesterday two more people asked me what I thought about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize.

A Trip To Tweakerland

You — and by “you,” I mean everybody, not any specific demographic, strata, gender, party, orientation. proclivity, or inclination, even the verdammt Dodger nation I…

Screen Time

Dipping into the national news for the first time in some months, I found several articles about the American Academy of Pediatrics rescinding most of their previous suggestions that parents limit the number of hours their infants, toddlers, older children, and teens interface with media-blasting computer gizmos with screens. The pediatricians decided they were being too alarmist about how damaging computers and other television-like devices can be to the brains and psyches of infants and children and teens. Now, say the pediatricians, basing their new guidelines on no credible science, parents should feel fine about children watching as much media garbage as they want.

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