Way back at the start of senior year at our coastal Southern California high school, one of my very best friends Tom said to me “My big brother is living at a small commune up…
Posts published in “Essays”
Vietnam, G.I. was a first-rate newspaper founded and edited by SP/5 Jeff Sharlet in January 1968. It was an almost-monthly tabloid. This piece is from the September 1968 issue. The last issue came out in…
It was the winter of 1956. The Vice President of the United States, Richard Nixon, was trying to convince voters that he would be a wise choice in the upcoming Presidential primaries. His advisers had…
Bainbridge Island, Washington. It was 1973. I was eight years old and Hollywood was into disaster movies. Somehow, I fibbed my way with a friend and his teenage, baby-sitting sister into a matinee screening of…
Some 23 years ago I had some free time and I wanted to serve on a Sonoma County Fair Board. This honor is an appointment made by the Governor. Ironically of all the appointments made…
I was still about half drunk when my plane touched down in San Diego. It had been three weeks since I signed my enlistment papers, and I used that time wisely. I had partied. Large.…
When you leave California and return to Arkansas in the spring time, you immediately notice how red the earth is and how green the grass and trees are, and you breathe the scent of pine.…