California has been depicted as a “failed state”: leading the nation in unemployment, adult illiteracy, lowest bond ratings, the near lowest school scores, most people on welfare, highest number of homes underwater. With most of…
Posts published in “Essays”
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.” — Raymond Chandler Before the advent of the interweb, I frequented libraries and secondhand bookstores in search of good short stories, my appetite for…
Dear President Obama, It seems that the theme emanating from the White House is “Eat, Pray, Be Disappointed.” And yet, whenever I do feel disappointed, I always realize that the alternative was John McCain, with…
In the Anderson Valley, there's futbol and there's football.
The football people think their football isn't get ting a fair shake.
Today was our day to do nothing. No school for him. No work for me. No important errands to run. No play-dates to be on time for. So we were busy. He was up early…
George Soros announced a few weeks ago that he is giving $100 million to Human Rights Watch — conditional on the organization to find a matching $100 million a year from other donors for ten…
Re-reading the favorite books of one’s youth can be dangerous, or at least disappointing. They rarely measure up to the image and influence they had upon first encounter. That has too often been my sad experience, at least. But Henry Miller has been a happy exception.
I have never heard of a workshop for writers that teaches the efficacious use of sex to make it big in thea tre or publishing or the movie business, but any writer who has toiled in Hollywood or New York or in the out posts of those Babylons knows that sexual linkage to people in power is of paramount importance to success in The Biz; and anyone who denies this is either a phony or grossly naïve.