Posts published in “Essays”

Twenty years ago at a party in San Francisco, the host introduced me to a man named Jack and said, “You are both serious film buffs. Have at it.”

A silence fell and I realized Jack was waiting for me to begin, so I said, “I just saw Basquiat. Didn’t believe it or like it, and I thought the paintings of his they chose to show were ill-chosen.”

I’ve always loved the reading rooms of great libraries: the busy hush of research underway; the reluctance of old pages being turned; the furtive glances at the mysterious materials laid out on the desk alongside and at the person who’s ordered them; the fleeting eye contact made over the top of tomes

Early last year, four US Bureau of Reclamation officials came to Anita Lodge’s seven-acre property deep in the San Joaquin River gorge, 33 miles northeast…

You hear a lot of rubbish about how county employees are underpaid (ha) and that if they don’t get big raises they’ll quit and swarm…

Sometimes, near enough to the summer solstice that the days acquire a certain heft and the temperature and pressure of the evenings permits an easy…

When President Obama appointed Dollie Gee to the U.S. District Court in 2010, he undoubtedly didn't expect her to mount a frontal challenge to his…