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Posts published in “Essays”

Of Sardines & Sea Lions, Fishermen & NGOs

In Southern and Central California, nearly 2,000 California sea lion pups have struggled ashore this winter, starving and lost because the ocean has been unable…

Mad or Mad!

MTC's production of Gaslight is superb, from well-turned out performances, to the Victorian period Set, costumes, makeup, hair, the music, and of course, gas lights that brighten and dim. First nights are not always so great. This one was. I left feeling a certain thrill, part of a secret, on the cutting — did I say slashing? — edge of knowing something that only the rather full-house-for-a-Thursday evening, knew. We had witnessed something special.

The Thematics of Spring Break

Ithaca, New York. — Patches of snow cling to the muddy earth in the city’s picturesque nineteenth-century cemetery just. In the nearby gorge the creek builds…

The Way It Used To Be: 1957

Toronto -- Old Woodbine Race Track. There's never been enough emphasis on horse racing. If it were only so simple, so quick to the quick,…

Completion

Several years ago I wrote a piece for the AVA entitled When Is It Done? in which I recounted my meeting with the poet William Everson in Santa Cruz circa 1971. I was hitchhiking on the coast highway, Everson picked me up, and being an aspiring writer and a devotee of his poet compatriot Philip Whalen, I asked William, formerly known as Brother Antoninus, a question I immediately regretted: how do you know when a poem is done?

HumCo’s $3.5 mil Psych Staff Contract

Facing the loss of psychiatric services staff in the county’s Mental Health Branch, the Board of Supervisors has approved a one-year contract with a firm…

A Historical Neurosis

My parents moved to Connecticut when I was eight years old, and it was the suburbs. And suburbs were new then. Levittown had been built when... in the '40's, '47? ... and this was a brand-new suburban subdivision called the Highlands. My parents bought a house, and everything seemed okay except that there was a part of me that immediately felt something was definitely wrong there.

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