UCSF Medical Center is the largest employer in San Francisco besides the city and county itself. Cliff LeBlanc worked there for more than 42 years, retiring in 1998. He was calm, amiable, very knowledgable about…
Posts published in “Essays”
In the southwest corner of the 2.8 acres of unbuilt land in Berkeley known since April 20, 1970 as “People’s Park,” there grew a tree which I planted there that morning. An unlabeled sapling, about…
I turn 80 in a few days, as I’ve been saying for about six months now and it’s a good age. I don’t think about my health, I am living proof that bad habits don’t…
The cost of prescription drugs in the US is the highest in the world and by a substantial margin. We pay over 250% more for medications than similar countries. If a person is fortunate enough…
I am standing at the base of Mount Shasta on a late summer day as rivulets of snowmelt bleed out of rock and fill up a small pool whose waters will join other pools and…
I got an invitation yesterday to the opening of an art exhibit at The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, NC because our family lent a painting to the show a couple…
Call them the king and the queen of the endangered monarch butterflies. Ole Schell and Elizabeth Weber, both of whom grew up in a world of privilege, have put their own privilege to work for…
Like others, it’s fair to say, or at least like other oldies, I had not purchased any new clothing in a year. I sometimes wore the same shirt and jeans for a month.The only people…
Margaret Renkl, 61, is a New York Times opinion columnist who describes her beat as “flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.” She lives in Nashville where she was a high school teacher…