Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Essays”

The Dream Car

Almost everybody seems to agree that the Mendocino/Sonoma coast is some of the most beautiful landscape on the planet, and many of us who feel that way covet real estate there. I’m generally immune to…

‘On The House,’ John Boehner’s Barstool Memoir

If you think golf is not only a great form of recreation or business meeting, but a grand metaphor for life and politics, if you admire people like Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Dick Cheney,…

The Sneeze

Seattle hosted the baseball All-Star Game a few weeks ago, so the city, of course, cleared all the bum encampments within parking distance of the stadium. The sweeps were cruel but almost comical — the…

Love & Work

When I was a young boy it was not necessary to pay any money to women. Later I paid money to a few women to whom I wish all good things well. The principle woman…

Our Gershwin

For music lovers possessed of even a dollop of reason September was a grim month as paeans to George Gershwin crescendoed toward mega-sforzando on the 24th, the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Aside from their…

My Muslim Mama’s Engagement, 1948

Selma sat in a corner of the big couch in her parents’ living room, hands folded neatly in her lap. Her father stood in front of her, stern and larger than life.  “If you marry…

The Body Under The Blanket

I was riding a city bus to the diner for breakfast, and on the way, I glanced out the window and noticed a bum sprawled the long way across the bench in a bus shelter.…

-