Is it possible that we Americans only pretend not to notice the conditions that produce an epidemic of school shootings, or is the public just too dumbed-down to connect the dots? Look at the schools…
Posts tagged as “essays”
There are thousands of smart people in this country poring over the financial facts, straining to accurately predict business trends. Nowhere is that future murkier than in California’s nascent marijuana business, fully legal now in…
On a scale of one to ten, I admit that when it comes to governance, my confidence in the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors is zero. Nada cum zilch. For decades, county roads have equaled…
Growing up in Anderson Valley in the late 1950s and 1960s meant learning a few skills, maybe not for everyone, but certainly for my siblings and me. We were living at my parent’s summer camp,…
No work of music has a greater lock on a single ritual than Edward Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance March no. 1 does on American graduations. Cock an ear in the direction of high school and…
The Time: Autumn, 1958. The place: the playground of the Washington Consolidated School, Washington, Connecticut. A big crowd of kids are in a circle around two fighting boys. Jimmy Tompkins has his arm hooked around…
"The Lottery" is a famous short story by Shirley Jackson about an annual small town drawing whose winner is stoned to death. The story makes the point that small towns can be mean places. Lately,…
I've taken my share of beatings in my life; more, really, given that the average beating occurrence among Americans is probably not much more than zero, beatings being pretty finely distributed among very specific demographics…