Posts published in September 2015

The electric gate wasn’t working and Ella had to get out of the truck and drag it open herself, which probably screwed things up worse and would make the gate harder to fix later, then she had to get back into the gargantuan gasguzzling Tundra that as an environmentalist she hated, drive the polluting monstrosity through the pie wedge opening, park on the outside of their property which had a steep incline just before the white line that marked the skirt of the two-lane highway – meaning some beer-drunk asshole could easily drift off course and hit her – set the parking break, get out again to close the stupid gate, and then climb back into the truck and hope the engine didn’t stall or the emergency brake didn’t slip. Rose was with her too, which made her worry even more about the beer-drunk assholes and the part where she had to leave the truck to close the gate.

Two hours into tonight’s Open Mike at Club Muse, a dumpy old pub on San Pablo Avenue in Richmond California, most of the eighty-seven patrons have ceased to pay attention to the performers—the music awful,…

When some years ago I read a piece by Ernest Hemingway called Now I Lay Me, I thought there was nothing further to be said about insomnia. I see now that that was because I had never had much; it appears that every man’s insomnia is as different from his neighbor’s as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.

I have been in the county almost 20 years now. It has probably been the most challenging 20 years of my life. It's been very difficult at times and really tested every character trait and every emotion that I could probably come up with and more — being in this county and coming into contact with the people who live here.