The fierce cougar attack last week in the afternoon on one of the two women biking together at a Southern California Wilderness Park only half a mile from some houses was both tragic and unusual.…
Posts published in “Essays”
Forever, people in power have been afraid of fiction. Wild imaginings threaten to undermine the view of the world as unchangeable, the easy idea that history is set in its course like footprints in cement.…
American leaders don’t easily learn lessons from the past. Before choosing war in Iraq, the Bush leadership might profitably have consulted former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons…
Lately I've received several end-of-the-year form letters wherein the sender(s) painstakingly detail their lives over the past year. It's the kind of missive only mothers could love, but nonetheless are becoming quite trendy among the…
The early afternoon summer sun reflected off the lake onto my ceiling and danced on my desk. The front door to my little bachelor cottage was open and a slight breeze blew across my desk…
Dear Santa — I’ve been a very good boy in 2003. Well, it’s all relative, right? Compared to Kobe Bryant and Paul Wolfowitz I look like #1 eagle scout with unsurpassed fire making and knot-tying…
It may be that the interest in and affection for life in the old East Germany is a result of the current German “crisis” — the climbing unemployment, the catastrophic shape of the pension system,…
Just after midnight, the pitch-black New Year’s night suddenly came alive with darting shadows. The slap-slap of rubber boots against the slick pavement echoed throughout the silent neighborhoods on the periphery of the city. Sleepy…
A recent Associated Press story by Don Thompson reports: “Mexican cartels have taken over much of California's marijuana farming, boosting both the potency of the drug and the propensity for violence from armed guards protecting…