Last year, handguns killed forty-eight people in Japan, eight in Great Britain, fifty-two in Canada, twenty-one in Sweden, and 10,728 in the United States. I was listening to the Giants sweep the Dodgers and feeling euphoric and glad when I received the email with those handgun death statistics, and I was reminded of a dharma talk I attended many years ago in Berkeley.
Posts published in “Essays”
Back in the days right after the extinction of the dinosaurs, when I was still new to New York City, it was a pretty frequent…
Candy Bergen has just published a memoir called "A Fine Romance." According to the New York Times, the actress "parses the nation’s infatuation with the…
Backstory: Confluence Vineyard was always George H. Bush’s preferred single vineyard Pinot from Goldeneye, and the year before I worked harvest there, the last thing…
First off, I was raised in Humboldt County by tweakers in a town called Rio Dell. Not only were my parents tweakers but so were…
A column about Cal Fire's State Responsibility Area (SRA) fees seems to be an annual ritual, but this year there are new twists and turns…
No, he didn’t hurt me or make me cry on purpose, or even know who I was or that I cried. He was just giving…
I pruned trees for a woman in Berkeley who always had her television on. Loud. She would invite me in after I was done with my work, serve me lemonade, and write me a check while soap opera actors on her gigantic television screen emoted and spoke to each other as no humans have ever spoken to each other except in soap operas and bad plays.
I had no idea that Nellie was an alcoholic. One night I woke up and noticed she wasn't in the bed; I went downstairs and…
I doubt that I'm the first person to wonder where it is they're coming from, when the cows come home; you don't see a lot…
Lee grew up here in the Ukiah Valley, attending grade school and high school, graduating in 1964 — then he went off to Napa Junior College for…