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Posts published in “Essays”

Sideline At The ‘Stick

Sunday an hour before kick-off, Niners vs Seattle, I’m on the sideline behind the Seahawk bench. A few players for both teams are on the field, running practice routes, playing soft toss, punting balls high…

Sonic Trash

Praised by some as the summation of Robert Red­ford’s distinguished acting career, his latest film begins without music, just the stillness of a calm sea at dawn, the wide-screen expanse bathed in myriad shades of…

Understanding Emotional Abuse

Before she was a victim of homicide, Susan Keegan was a victim of emotional abuse.

When we think about domestic violence, we tend to think about physical harm, but a victim can also be the target of verbal aggression, manipulative behavior, and deliberate efforts to humiliate or belittle. Contempt is often part of that package, with the abuser mocking or insulting his partner, demeaning her appearance, demanding obedience, even becoming enraged when chores are not done as requested. Sex may become a weapon — for example, when an abuser insists that marriage itself entitles him to sex where, when, and how he wants it.

Being Gotten

You remember, I’m sure, that time you went to a party with no great expectation of anything beyond munching and drinking and blah-dee-blah, and you met someone with whom you had phenomenal rapport, so much…

The Ballad Of Dennis Peron

The Emerald Cup, the sprawling Cannabis festival launched in Laytonville by Tim Blake in 2004, will be held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds this weekend, and Dennis Peron is getting a lifetime achievement award. The marijuana legalization movement would not have achieved its great breakthrough in 1996 without Dennis, the founder and maitre’d of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club. Proposition 215, which legalized the herb for medical use in California, was a collective effort, but Dennis was the indispensable organizer.

Where Was Carlos Marcello?

Fifty years on and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains a national puzzle wrapped inside the enigmatic riddle that was Lee Harvey Oswald. Did he act alone? Or was JFK killed by a…

The Fortunate Son Redux

Big Dog came by the house on a Friday afternoon, late in the day. Watching his arrival from the front room I could tell by the deliberate walk to the porch and the concern on…

From The Archives: Food & Forgetfulness

(June 2001) Driving to town the other day I got stuck behind a livestock trailer taking calves to auction. Bum­bling along at 30 mph I was forced to listen to an NPR interview, by Terry…

Scoring Disasters

What did people do before the invention of motion pictures to visualize the devastations wrought by natural disasters? From God’s fury on earth manifested in hurri­canes and fires to the final cataclysm of the Last…

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