When I was in my twenties I sent dozens of my short stories to The New Yorker with no success, and when I was in my early thirties, after my first two novels garnered stellar reviews in the Briefly Noted section of The New Yorker, I was emboldened to resume sending them my short stories through my agent, the incomparable Dorothy Pittman, and again I had no success.
Posts published in “Essays”
In spite of the record drought, the forecast for recreational and commercial salmon fishing year on the California coast from Horse Mountain in Humboldt County to below Monterey looks relatively good, according to data released…
Underneath all forms of defeatism, there’s always a possibility of victory. This principle was etched into Arthur Miller as an adolescent who was 14 years old when The Great Depression of 1929 engulfed the women’s underwear factory of his father.
We were ready to have a very nice party, a friend's big brother's 21st birthday affair in a fancy house on the cliff over the ocean, a keg of beer already tapped and some amps…
Our cat Django is a very large and handsome gray cat, or as our veterinarian said politely, “Shall we call him obese?”
Snow speckled Middle Street in the North End during the last week of February. Near Mr. Pemberton's meeting house boys were pelting the dry goods shop of Theophilus Lillie, pelting it with stones, snowballs and…
The Federal government just released their first assessment for water allocations for the coming year in California after the driest year on record since they kept records 118 years ago. The news is historical and…
The two young Americans were very lucky to have met David on the ferry between Algeciras and Tangiers. Things might have turned out much worse. David was a tall, elegant, cosmopolitan, multi-lingual Brit who befriended…
A community forum on county jail release policies put questions to a local panel whose members in turn asked residents to consider what they can do to effect change. Faced with obvious dissatisfaction over late…