Near the close of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold, the first of the four operas that make up his epic Ring of the Nibelung cycle, Donner the God of Thunder delivers a depressing weather report—literally so,…
Posts published in “Essays”
Almost everybody seems to agree that the Mendocino/Sonoma coast is some of the most beautiful landscape on the planet, and many of us who feel that way covet real estate there. I’m generally immune to…
If you think golf is not only a great form of recreation or business meeting, but a grand metaphor for life and politics, if you admire people like Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Dick Cheney,…
Seattle hosted the baseball All-Star Game a few weeks ago, so the city, of course, cleared all the bum encampments within parking distance of the stadium. The sweeps were cruel but almost comical — the…
When I was a young boy it was not necessary to pay any money to women. Later I paid money to a few women to whom I wish all good things well. The principle woman…
For music lovers possessed of even a dollop of reason September was a grim month as paeans to George Gershwin crescendoed toward mega-sforzando on the 24th, the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Aside from their…
Selma sat in a corner of the big couch in her parents’ living room, hands folded neatly in her lap. Her father stood in front of her, stern and larger than life. “If you marry…
I was riding a city bus to the diner for breakfast, and on the way, I glanced out the window and noticed a bum sprawled the long way across the bench in a bus shelter.…
And then there’s Bali, a name of guaranteed glamour, known to all. Before the Second World War, I had heard of incomparable Bali from aristocrats of travel—those who could pay for the expensive journey— and…