Ithaca, New York. — Patches of snow cling to the muddy earth in the city’s picturesque nineteenth-century cemetery just. In the nearby gorge the creek builds momentum ever hour as the thaw gathers force. Just beyond…
Posts published in “Essays”
Toronto -- Old Woodbine Race Track. There's never been enough emphasis on horse racing. If it were only so simple, so quick to the quick, but only in stories. Just getting to the track was…
I hope we can all pause and reflect on the extraordinary life of a true American hero on Tuesday (March 31). It's Cesar Chavez Day, proclaimed by President Obama and observed throughout the country on…
I recently sat down with the Stony Lonesome for a hard-hitting, take no prisoners, straight from the hip interview. He rarely allows journalists entree into his circle, so I felt quite privileged — as should…
Several years ago I wrote a piece for the AVA entitled When Is It Done? in which I recounted my meeting with the poet William Everson in Santa Cruz circa 1971. I was hitchhiking on the coast highway, Everson picked me up, and being an aspiring writer and a devotee of his poet compatriot Philip Whalen, I asked William, formerly known as Brother Antoninus, a question I immediately regretted: how do you know when a poem is done?
Facing the loss of psychiatric services staff in the county’s Mental Health Branch, the Board of Supervisors has approved a one-year contract with a firm that recruits and hires psychiatrists. The $3.5 million contract with…
My parents moved to Connecticut when I was eight years old, and it was the suburbs. And suburbs were new then. Levittown had been built when... in the '40's, '47? ... and this was a brand-new suburban subdivision called the Highlands. My parents bought a house, and everything seemed okay except that there was a part of me that immediately felt something was definitely wrong there.
Spring has finally returned to the Ohio Valley. Iris and daffodil bulbs are sending forth chutes, and the wheat fields turning emerald green. Just like the rest of America, I always associated green with St.…
CAUTION! DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN! You see the signs up and down the Mendocino Coast, wherever land, people and sea interface; often, the signs are accompanied by grisly descriptions of hapless…