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Posts published in “Essays”

Birdkillers

You want your terrorist scares. The ISIS of the natural world resides in your backyard or, at most, the field beyond. We're talking cats. Cats kill at least one billion birds per year. Some estimates…

Adventures In Babysitting

I never had any children, for much the same reason that I never kept rabid weasels: I do not require the presence of small, toxic, hyperactive biters destroying a house to fulfill me, and if…

Memorial Day Realities

My father worked the “industrial” side of what Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex. He ran a division of a major automobile corporation that made weaponry, or parts thereof, for the military. After he died, we found a letter addressed to him from a senior general he worked with.

‘It’s Gonna Be Serpentine’

By the time this article is read, the California Primary will be history. On Wednesday, political pundits will be steering their follower’s click-throughs and eyeballs toward the dedicated soldiers digging the candidate’s protective political moats,…

Sherlock Gnomes

Marcia came into my office a few days ago and said, “Have you seen the little gnome in Flower Pot Village?”

I thought she might be pulling my leg, since we are not gnome collectors, but lo, clinging with both hands to the edge of a large terra cotta flower pot in the assemblage of flower pots we call Flower Pot Village was a small Caucasian gnome, five-inches-tall, a happy smiling ceramic fellow with a white beard, pointy gold hat, turquoise jacket, brown trousers and black shoes.

Nausea Rising

Considering that the 2016 election looks like a Dark Age puppet show — Pantalone and La Signora smacking each other with dildos — we forget this spectacle is serious. Rather large matters are at stake,…

Words Alone

I am surrounded by words: Newspapers, magazines, and mailings of all sorts mess up my desk, which is really just the southwest corner of this ranch house's kitchen. When there is no company, no visitors,…

AV Panthers’ Stellar Year

A very special era in Anderson Valley boys athletics is ending at graduation on June 9th, 2016. Unlike our local North Coast Leauge (NCL) 3, I grew up in a town where there were 2500…

A Legacy of Buffoonery

It had all the earmarks of being a classic boy-meets-girl episode, and I think it unfair to assign any blame to me for the way things turned out. You may as well blame the springtime,…

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