By now, all the red, white and blue bunting has been taken down and stored. The last notes of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” have faded into silence. The last advertisements for “4th of July”…
Posts published in “Essays”
Though I was only nine years old, I still remember how overjoyed my parents were back in November of 1960 when the votes had been tallied and John Fitzgerald Kennedy had squeaked to victory as…
(A Candid Review of Can Legal Weed Win? The Blunt Realities of Cannabis Economics (UC Press; $24.95)) Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner, two economists and professors at UC Davis—once known as the aggie school—ask a…
The foremost critic of Prozac from the time it hit the market in 1988 has been Peter Breggin, MD. Appearing as an expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs harmed by SSRIs, he has cost the…
What oughta be obituaries are instead heroic revivals as local cops save yet another moron from a fatal fentanyl overdose with a wonder drug called NarCan. It’s enough to make you cry. Instead of the…
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe occupies a five-acre site in the center of Berlin. Until 1990 the area was in the No-Man’s-Land between the inner and outer sections of the Berlin Wall.…
There was a death in my neighborhood this week. It happened on Sunday. I knew it was coming. I heard her telling some one at the next table. Gatip, the Lombard Street restaurant, was on…
Intentionally or unintentionally, Congress’ elected Democratic Party leaders have won the January 6 Hearings. No matter what testimony remains to come in the final session (or sessions), the creation of the Committee was a stroke…
Dr. John Brown, Aunt Blanche’s grandfather, settled in Philo in 1862, during the Civil War. His family had migrated to California, along with Iowa neighbors, the Prathers and Ingrams, in 1863. Brown family roots go…