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Posts published in “Essays”

Medical Care At Burning Man

At Burning Man sometimes something happens that is so totally unexpected and delightful you shake your head in wonderment. Interviewing the medical director of Emergency Services at Burning Man this year we both got a…

Please, Not A Country For Old Men

I’m not entirely certain what a country for old white men would look and feel like, but I have been thinking about that image/concept ever since I first saw the movie, No Country for Old…

Bum Like Me

I've never been homeless, but I've been poor, lived in shitesque neighborhoods, and over the years I've known several homeless folks well enough to say good morning and have a conversation. In my experience, they're…

Assignment: Ukiah: 1) Cured By Weed; 2) The Anti-Library

I’ve been a skeptic of marijuana as a medical miracle for almost as long as I’ve been doubtful the Easter Bunny lays eggs in my stocking once a year and the Cleveland Browns are someday…

Rehab Update

Wow, two weeks since the hip replacement operation, and each day a delicious lunch is brought to me sitting in the recliner in front of the TV. I’ve been retrained to do the rest: make…

Kind Of Blue: Still On The Job At 65

Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue turned sixty-five last month, the same age at which the trumpeter would die thirty-two years after recording the album. The record shows no signs of infirmity. It has no plans…

The N-Word: Still Troublesome After All These Years

The N-word appears sparingly in James, Percival Everett’s 2024 novel that reinvents the escaped slave narrative while it recycles Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a classic set in the antebellum American South where…

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