Driving to Boston from Ithaca to give a concert at the venerable early music festival there last week, I decided to listen to a book on tape rather than my usual fare of pastoral symphonies…
Posts published in “Essays”
A's Versus Giants Ballparks — If going to a ballgame at Giants Park in San Francisco is considered a step up in the major league baseball fan experience, well then going to an Oakland Athletics…
California has arguably taken stronger legislative steps to address climate change than any state in the union. Assembly Bill 32 mandates that the state reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. An executive…
A Grand Jury report echoes what firefighting officials have been telling Humboldt County — that rural fire departments have substandard equipment
My husband’s idea of a great day trip is anything that involves trains and back roads so we headed over to Maxwell on I-5 to satisfy his curiosity about an old rail line. While most…
There’s nothing funny about suicide, unfortunately; one cannot employ humor to mitigate the horror, not and remain within the bounds of humanity and good taste. It’s just too sad, and even though I crack wise…
The drought has reduced California’s water supply to an all-time low, prompting officials to mandate strict cutbacks in urban communities. Farmers, who went unaffected by the regulations, have said they have already made enough sacrifices…
Trust is a tricky thing. Long ago, I held writing workshops for groups of eight people meeting for two hours once a week in my living room, each course lasting eight weeks. At the outset, I would reiterate what I had explained to prospective participants when they called to sign up for the process: we would be doing my original writing exercises and there would be no lecturing or criticism or analysis of anything we wrote, by me or anyone in the group, and no one had to read aloud anything he or she wrote unless he or she wanted to.