I moved to Sacramento in 1980. I was 31 and experiencing a bit of success with my writing. I bought a piano and an old house in a quiet neighborhood and thus began my fifteen-year residency in that river town. I still own the piano and play her every day.
Posts published in “Essays”
It was one of those days. No, not one of those. Those are spoken of, and occur, often enough that we may as well just refer to them as “days.” I may have even mentioned…
Mischievous Hendrik Hertzberg emailed, “Have you seen my friend Clara Bingham’s oral history of 1969-70? Jane Fonda talks about you in it. Curious about your reaction.” It was too bad, he added, that Bingham hadn’t…
There was no way I was qualified to take over the position of Bilingual Resource Room teacher. I had no training in special education. None. However, I was sick of my incompetent ESL supervisor, Mrs.…
Dan Kuny went to work in the woods as a high school kid, and he's been out there ever since. A Mendocino County native, Kuny, 61, is well known throughout the County, both as a…
I was in the streets of Chicago in 1968 during the Democratic Convention. It was only a few months after Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were shot to death. The “establishment,” as we called…
When I was earning my living fishing, I, just as you, got pretty good at predicting weather by looking at clouds, waves, the behavior of birds, and wind direction. But, what I really set my…