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Posts published in “Essays”

Why I Became an Ambulance Driver/EMT

I never overly applied myself in school, which resulted in some mediocre finals and had the astounding consequence that I could not study biology, the only science that held any interest for me. Fortunately I…

Another Dead Dog (1971 to 1975)

Will the person who shot my dog down by Outlet Creek read this? Was she threatening you with her friendly tail wagging? Was it a mercy killing? Target practice? I hate not knowing why she…

Letter from Paris (to Ishmael Reed)

All is well here at our house. Religious fanatics were on other side of town. But religious fanaticism is a threat all the way around the globe. Not just the Islamic stripe either. And freedom…

The Windmill

In the 1940s I remember my grandfather digging a well at our pear ranch. It was not very deep and he lined with wooden boards. He purchased the parts to a windmill and when it…

The Gusts of Globalization

Last month the novelist, screenwriter, and CounterPunch contributor Clancy Sigal, whose most recent book is the vital Hemingway Lives!, sent me the following vignette, a history lesson in the nearly unbreakable union between music and…

Weed Seeds

Wild birds perch on bare lambsquarter limbs, picking off the tiny black seeds. Lambsquarters, the weed, is closely related to quinoa, the grain, one of the latest health crazes. Quinoa is mostly grown at high…

High Anxiety

The Gualala Community Center hosts Pay-N-Take, a second-hand store open on the first Saturday morning of every month, for almost everything recyclable, from fine china to table saws. I volunteered there for 14 years in…

The Stony Lonesome: ‘It Could Be Verse’

First off, Constant Reader, I would like to assure you that I have no idea what a "below standard boatswain door for grande" is, and I don't expect you to. I refer to a transcriptional…

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