The most famous event in the history of avant-garde literary San Francisco was Allen Ginsberg’s reading of “Howl” at the Six Gallery at 3119 Fillmore St. on Oct. 7, 1955. That frenzied reading, the subsequent…
Posts published in “Essays”
Two weeks ago our story introduced us to the life of Aunt Blanche Brown, teacher, historian, community asset. The episode ended with the fire that consumed her Indian Creek home in January, 1956. This week…
If you’re thinking about when to retire you should quit thinking and start partying like it’s 1999, back when you were younger, smarter and better looking. Putting off retirement because your Social Security check will…
Not by accident. In fact, intentionally. I am not plugged in; I am plugged out. Every day, I see my opposites, who confirm my choice. They come into and out of my field of vision…
With President Biden experiencing a return of COVID symptoms, there has been a flurry of news reports on “COVID rebound”. Let’s look at what this is and why it happens. First, it might be…
In the first of the four volumes of Thomas Nugent’s Grand Tour of 1749, that hefty guidebook required of aristocratic British travelers to the continent, the city of Ghent (now in Belgium, which didn’t exist…
Seventy-five years ago, when bulldozers began to be used to log the redwoods, a common practice began of blading logging slash from a landing as far as a dozer could push, usually that meant into…
No one seems to keep a tally of the exact number of storytellers in San Francisco, but there seem to be more of them, at more venues and with bigger and more diverse audiences than…
Reading Ralph Bostrom’s interesting letter about sailing with the merchant marine service to Curacao, I was reminded of my own experiences with the Seamen's International Union on board a freighter bound for Saigon in 1968.…