Recently I was asked, “When ya gonna write somethin' positive?” Answer: When I get sick and tired of watching reruns of the black and white episodes of The Andy Griffith Show and Shameless. Shameless is…
Posts published in “Essays”
Dear Parents (and others), We write as concerned health professionals and community members. Our topic: Vaccination, or lack thereof, and risks to our health. The urge to protect one’s children is one of the strongest…
Digging around for photos of my grandmother, I came across a black and white picture of me taken in 1969, a still shot from a student film made during my second and final year of college at UC Santa Cruz—when tuition was next to nothing. My decision to quit college was made easier than it would be today because housing in 1969 was cheap, work was easy to come by, and the economic obstacles to experimenting with being an artist were minimal, certainly compared to the economic realities of 2015.
For a few years in the 1970s, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were America's Beatles — the most popular rock “supergroup” of them all, known widely as “CSNY.” And Graham Nash was the band's George…
And so ends my experience with the online personals: I must've contacted at least 150 women from all over the West Coast in their 40's and I don't know if its my location, age, looks,…
I smoke marijuana (medical), drink Russian vodka (political, Go Vlad!) and take two pills from Big Pharma every morning to address my lifelong hypertension. When I was enlisting in the National Guard at 17 they…
According to legend, my mother's dad whistled like a pro. Supposedly as he tinkered around the farm, he taught Jazz tunes to the mockingbird that followed him from job to job, entertaining from a lofty…
The Albion River and its close environs bears little resemblance to its appearance when I was a boy. Then you could walk or drive unimpeded up Allan's Gulch to the southeast of this house. Just…
When I arrive at Soledad State Prison the first person I meet is the mother of the groom. She comes forward in the bright sunlight beside the squat building, the Visitors Receiving Center. “Hi, I'm Diane,…