How can a life-saving drug (Daraprim) that has been widely available since the 1940s for $1 suddenly cost $740? Is this what the FDA's mission is when it says it exists "to promote and protect…
Posts published in “Essays”
Javier sat cramped in the second van’s cargo area smothered in brightly colored piñatas; Sponge Bob Square Pants, Dora The Explorer, Emmo, classic Mexican burros, and a cluster of canteros where Satan lurked inside the clay centers and tempted you with the decorated conical points, one for each of the seven deadly sins. Alma had explained the history and superstition of the canteros to him one better day when they were stuffing one full of candy for Alfredo’s birthday. She had told him that their used to be eight deadly sins, but good Catholics only believed in seven.
Media coverage of Kelly Gissendaner’s execution in the small hours of Wednesday morning stressed the apparent anomalies of an act that, in this country, is hardly anomalous: that she was first woman to be killed…
Baseball season is again winding down, and it's not looking real promising for the home team. While not yet "mathematically eliminated," as I write this it appears that, barring a fairly unlikely series of improbably…
Most families have a code these days, to protect the sanctity of shared holiday meals and allow the normally inane conversations at these events to proceed according to expectation. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t talk…
1972. Santa Cruz. Never enough money. I was working days as a gardener, nights playing music. My girlfriend was a waitress and house cleaner. Rent was cheap but wages were negligible.
Continuing the mildly fictionalized saga of young Les Ford in Mendocino County a hundred ten years or so ago, here is a second excerpt from the opening chapter of the novel Outlaw Ford: * *…
The year is 1985. Reagan has just been reelected, but Republican fortunes across the country are waning. The Gipper was beginning to show his incapacities and the party itself seemed just as hoary. The hunt was…
A recent item in the Off The Record section of this-here publication stated that a certain group of Supervisors approved the disbursement of a big ol' chunk of dough, nearly 100 large, to the Hospitality…