Here We Go Again
Three and one-half short weeks ago, I was benching my weight and doing 15 pull-ups at a go. Granted, I don’t weigh…
The Loma Prieta Exaggerations
This 30th anniversary of the quake has provided the Chronicle and Bay Area media with a week's worth of reminiscences…
Who Will Save My Sole?
Walking into Ralph’s Shoe Repair on North State Street took me all the way back through the years to my five-year-old self…
Methodist Minister and His Wife Adopt Children of All Races
(Life Magazine – November 12, 1951) Ten years ago, like many childless couples, Carl and Helen Doss began their family by adopting…
Livernash, Part 2
Previously, Edward Livernash, prodigy of the legal and journalistic worlds in Northern California, uses hypnotic somnambulism to explain away an arrest then…
The Head Ride IV
Regular readers of my fetching prose will remember three earlier installments of this piece that dealt with my passion for motorcycle touring,…
Favorite Things: Greta, Ariana, Coltrane & The Von Trapps
Greta Thunberg’s four-minute jeremiad at the United Nations this past Monday was delivered not standing behind a pulpit or kneeling on rocky…
Powerless: Ain’t Got No ‘Lectricity
When I heard that PG&E was going to turn off power in my part of the world my first response was denial.…
Haight Before the Lovers Moved In
I lived in the Haight because it was a cheap, lower middle-class neighborhood, and a step above the Tenderloin. In 1963 it…
Livernash
A young attorney, who had hung his shingle in Mendocino's county seat, proved to be the first witness in the history of…
Tex & Garlic’s
I traded some property many years ago and bought an older country home in Healdsburg just out of town. I rented this…
Goodbye Stranger: A Wildcard in Three Acts
Act One: When I was a freshman in high school Julie Pardini would drive Mr. Biggins and me 26.2 miles every morning…