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Posts published in “Essays”

One Stump Town

He was a mean ugly slumlord, pushing 80 with a big chip on his shoulder. Every week he drove his old yellow van into town to pick up groceries that grew rancid on the shelves…

Female Firsts

Women got short shrift in 19th century reporting. If married, a woman was almost always referred to in print by her husband's first and last name, with Mrs. in front of that. You could give…

Dangerous Blues: Monk Does Vadim

The late 1950s were great years for black-and-white movies in France: I’m referring specifically to those with white people on screen, and black musicians invisible on the soundtrack. The most famous of these films is…

My Roller Derby Date

After Roller Derby in Eureka, after lots of sushi and sake in Arcata, after she drove home to Trinidad at 11pm I walked around the corner to the Arcata Hotel where I found a No…

Gus

The lucky accident of our place and time has spared us the unspeakable domestic horror of watching our families and friends displaced from their homes and slaughtered as they flee for their lives. Our modern…

Hmong Among Us

On a summer day in June it was hot and dry almost everywhere in California. Nearly eight thousand miles away, it was hot and rainy across much of Laos, the landlocked nation in Southeast Asia…

Fear The Beard!

Of all the mystifying shit that youth is getting up to these days — body-madding, skinny jeans, gender-hopping, emoji poetry, and molecular cuisine being just a few notable examples — I find the proliferation of…

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