No keyboard player of this or any other age has been more wide-ranging than Keith Jarrett. His contributions to jazz extend from the endlessly astonishing treatment of standards to expansive and spontaneous explorations of the…
Posts published in “Essays”
Let me get this straight. The United States government blithely oversees the killing and maiming of women and children and unarmed civilians with missiles fired from drones and helicopters and jets and battleships, invades other countries in the service of multinational corporations and uses artillery shells made with so-called depleted uranium spreading cancerous dust wherever they explode, and incarcerates and tortures people without charge for years and decades, but that same government says we have a moral obligation to bomb Syria and kill untold numbers of Syrians because the Syrian government has killed people using weaponry we don’t like them using, though we did nothing in response to the Syrian government killing tens of thousands of people over the last two years using weapons we do approve of?
We’re fortunate to live here in a place called Big Valley in the northeast corner of California on the Lassen/Modoc County line that has so far managed to avoid overpopulation and overdevelopment and the resultant hyper lifestyle that gives sad valid relevance to the contemporary epithet Californicated.
Attorney General Eric Holder phoned the governors of Colorado and Washington August 29 to advise that the U.S. Department of Justice will allow implementation of the marijuana-law reforms enacted by voters in 2012. Some call…
The giant Burning Man structure went up in flames on Labor Day weekend as usual, and I watched it — online. It looked very dramatic and impressive. As the tens of thousands of “BM” attendees gathered around to watch and cheer in person as the smoke and fireworks rose to the sky, it also reminded me of the main reason I don't go up there to witness it all in person.
My brother sent me a fascinating article published recently in New Scientist that warns of the impending loss of a gigantic part of our recent cultural heritage. To quote from the article: “Magnetic tape begins to degrade chemically in anything from a few years to a few decades, depending on its precise composition.”
Whistling down the Amtrak line in the region of Fernley, Nevada, about five in the afternoon, in the observation car under a lid of smoke from Sierra Nevada fires, scanning the murky sagebrush hills for…