For the last two years, I have, like most folks, immersed myself in the daily (political) news, steeping in the vile stew and concocting a bitter brew indeed. Indignation, disbelief, horror, scorn, frustration, and sorrow…
Posts tagged as “essays”
Tim Moellering, history teacher and baseball coach at Berkeley High School, died on a Tuesday in 2011, after a lengthy struggle against cancer. Moellering's Berkeley High career followed nineteen years cross town teaching and coaching…
It was the summer of Woodstock, and Henry and Patsy were going. They asked Sheila and me to go but we heard the weather was going to be shitty. We decided to hop in the…
The Big Red pickup truck. Bright red with huge wheels that lift it high off the road. Guy moves in next door with this monster, parks it on the street with a "club" on the…
Beginning in the 1980s but gathering steam in the mid-to-late 1990s, American doctors turned millions of their chronic pain-suffering patients into opiate dependents. There was nothing ill-intended or illegal about it; pain relief had become…
Time travel has become a familiar enough subject to us by way of innumerable fictional treatments that we're all pretty conversant with the (contrived) ins and outs of it, the various scientific gymnastics and logical…
Academia is one of the last places on earth where one can expect innovation on the subject of marijuana. Still, this Spring, Sonoma State University (SSU) in Rohnert Park is going out on a limb…
All traces of snow are at last gone from the picturesque nineteenth-century cemetery in Ithaca, New York. Down below in the nearby the Cascadilla Gorge the creek gathers momentum from late-arriving spring’s rain. Just beyond…
By the way, for any new readers out there, I’ll disclose the Shields and Pinches families have been friends for about 30 years now. John’s dad, Sully, recently deceased, lived next to me out in the country. John’s brother and sister-in-law, Jimmy and Rhonda, live across the street from my daughter and son-in-law. And his sister, June Sizemore, is another long-time friend and much-loved member of the family.