We called her Old Margaret among ourselves then, when she was about as old as we are now. Friends had seen her walking along that portion of old highway south of town known as Ocean…
Posts published in “Essays”
About 20 years ago, I was teaching a third grade class at PS 30X in the Bronx. The school was located in a very poor neighborhood in the Bronx called Mott Haven. Among my students…
As a historian I’m the first person to admit I can start a project writing about one planned topic, influenza in Mendocino County in 1918, and get totally sidetracked and end up writing about how…
If you are in an area that has limited (or maybe zero) water available for frost protection, is there anything that you can do to mitigate the frost risk to your vineyard? In some areas,…
Like every other fan of the National Pastime, I've looked forward with great anticipation to the new baseball season. But I know it won't possibly match my favorite season of all time. It was 1950…
As I was getting off his table today, my acupuncturist said, “Remember. Water is your friend. Be sure to drink lots today.”
Checking my email when I got home, someone had sent me a link to an article about Governor Brown announcing a mandatory reduction in water use by California residents and businesses. There was a little video with the article, so I watched Jerry speak to the people of California as if we are idiots, which, collectively, we are. Jerry was performing on a meadow in the Sierras where, for the first time in the seventy-five years they’ve been measuring snow on that meadow, there is no snow on April Fools Day. Zero white stuff that makes water when it melts.
I suddenly find myself after 17 months of indolence here at Desert View State Prison trying mostly futilely to occupy my days in an interesting and productive fashion, employed. I shall be molding young criminal…
In Southern and Central California, nearly 2,000 California sea lion pups have struggled ashore this winter, starving and lost because the ocean has been unable to provide enough calories for their mothers to adequately feed…
MTC's production of Gaslight is superb, from well-turned out performances, to the Victorian period Set, costumes, makeup, hair, the music, and of course, gas lights that brighten and dim. First nights are not always so great. This one was. I left feeling a certain thrill, part of a secret, on the cutting — did I say slashing? — edge of knowing something that only the rather full-house-for-a-Thursday evening, knew. We had witnessed something special.