Every since the abominable attacks on Paris I’ve been emailing my closest French friends, Jean-Francois and Virginie, for first-hand news of the tragedy that unfolded there. From what I understand, they’ve been carrying on as…
Posts published in “Essays”
Thanksgiving looms like a giant mutant turkey at the outskirts of town, swinging wattles generating a cooling breeze as it casts its gimlet eye on the populace soon to become mulch under its horny yellow…
A few weeks ago a client asked me to fill a rental vacancy for her. I posted the home on Craigslist and on the local Facebook page for Anderson Valley, Boont-Swap. A bit of a…
People who love riding trains realize in this 21st century the lines are vanishing. If you suspect a spectacular stretch of rail travel is in danger of eliminating passenger service you GET There and RIDE…
Happy Double Anniversary to Me! It's a one, two, Jubilee! So pop the corks and pluck the storks and fell the anniversa-tree! So far as I know, there's no actual anniversa-tree, but I see no…
As I was sitting by the woodstove last night—this November much colder than last—scribbling away on my latest something, I was struck by how little connection I feel to the books and stories and plays I’ve written over the last forty years, or even to the book I finished writing earlier this year.
I always find it curious when moderns harp on the of problem opera’s verisimilitude. Theorists of the genre began to grapple with such objections as soon as the genre was hatched as a rebirth of…
Feliz Creek today, where it passes beneath highway 101 at Hopland is, in the summer, a parched expanse of dry streambed that is barely discernible as a watercourse. Only when it comes alive in the…
In the last 20 years there has been a proliferation of psychiatric drugs prescribed in the United States, not only by psychiatrists but by general practitioners. Anti-depressants, specifically SSRI's (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) like Prozac have become commonplace, and anti-anxiety medications are also popular. Not to be excluded are anti-psychotics used mostly for psychosis and schizophrenia.