When Barbara McNair died in February of 2007, not a single obituary mentioned her role in bringing down the lawyer who effectively owned Erhard Seminar Training (est) and the pitchman himself, Werner Erhard. The obits…
Posts tagged as “essays”
Critics still argue about which book might qualify as the greatest American novel. Moby-Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and numerous others have been put forth as candidates. The “just-the-facts-ma'am” answer lies in Philip Roth's 1973…
On their way to a matinee of the San Francisco Ballet, Roger and Susan must stand for the entire journey in a crowded subway car. They are wearing heavy coats on this chilly November day,…
To protect my identity, I am going to call myself Bonnie. To give you some history, I was in a relationship that broke up and I was devastated. I thought online dating would be fun,…
Revenge is an airborne disease in prison, one that seeps beneath the skin and pervades the atmosphere like a deadly fog. An inmate’s honor, once impugned, seems to require action, and the most common method…
“U.S. food prices are on the rise, raising a sensitive question: When the cost of a hamburger patty soars, does it count as inflation?” — Ben Leubsdorf and Jon Kilsenrath The sentence above opens a…
That last tour with Charlie Musselwhite was pretty brutal. Sharon and I wanted to have kids, and this is where we wanted to have them, so we moved back home to Ukiah in 1974. I…
The Republican convention of July 1952 was the first televised national convention. Although my younger brother Hugh was only four years old, he sat, transfixed, for all five days. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Earl Warren,…