"Guns don't kill people," said my opponent in the "debate." "People kill people." He delivered the kicker with a self-satisfied smirk and held out his fist for some appreciative dap from his homey for the…
Posts tagged as “essays”
Reading Kim by Rudyard Kipling for the tenth time in the last twenty-five years, I’ve been thinking about why this novel and no other of the thousands I’ve read calls to me again and again, and why, again and again, I am enthralled from first word to last.
My first real job might have been the best I ever had. Armed with a brand-new first driver's license, I delivered groceries and booze to the stars. Or, at least, a couple of them. Besides John Wayne, for example, there was Ozzie and Harriett Nelson.
Spring blossoms all around, circling and curing the brief bout with March Madness we experienced this year in the realm of Hoosier hysteria. On Good Friday, the time according to pagan tradition to plant potatoes,…
Okay, what is it with the beards? As a fashion trend, it seems a lot of young guys are sporting them. Of course there have always been men with beards, though usually older. Some because…
The Far hills, Mendocino County — In 1985 I knew a guy who tried to grow the devil-weed in a wildcat location, in the far hills. He walked for two hours to work, over hills, through…
It took me sixteen hours door-to-door in automobile, plane and subway train to get from my house in the center of New York state to this apartment in the center of Berlin. Last time I…