I saw the worst candidate of any generation elected
by a minority, lying shouting tweeting,
dragging our poor nation into the swampiest of backlashes
with a hostile takeover of democracy,
Posts published in “Essays”
I wasn't born a crazy, radical, hippie. I had a lot of help getting here over the years. My mother passed her bipolar gene on to me but I haven't had a problem with manic-depression in almost twenty years. PTSD is my biggie. My first major trauma occurred while I was still a very impressionable teenager with an Above Top Secret clearance in US Air Force Intelligence in Germany in the late 50s.
Eden, the original field of human thought, contains two fruit-bearing trees. One brings life and the other brings death. One fruit is digested and the other gets caught in the throat.
When William Faulkner was already a grand figure and John Kennedy was collecting such objects to adorn some of his private dinners, the writer received an invitation from the President for one of these events in the White House. At this table had already sat many of the Great: Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller, and the Sinatras, to name a few. Pablo Casals and his cello had aggrandized some of the exquisite desserts.
Irony is the not-so-new normal. Somewhere back in the swirling dry-ice mists of history, round about the time of the one-and-only Clinton Administration, this venerable figure-of-speech stretched its wings and its brand and became a…
I dunno about you, but I rather enjoy watching the praetorian Deep State go batshit crazy as the day of Trump’s apotheosis approacheth. I imagine a lot of men and women running down the halls…
There are probably settings more dismal than a Fort Bragg (northern latitude, coastal proximity) bus "shelter" on a late Sunday afternoon in mid-November during a rainstorm, but as my prevailing worldview is far too cheerful…
We are feeling pampered and special because the power went back on after a two-day outage. We know there will probably be another outage when the next storm hits, but for now we’re on Easy Street. No more cooking on the woodstove. No more boiling water in the old kettle to wash dishes. No more writing by candlelight. Our computers work again. We can take showers. Luxury!
There was a crowd gathering outside the College of the Redwoods auditorium, we had all come to hear one of my literary heroes Sherman Alexie give his talk. Indian kids had been bussed in from…