Scott Fitzgerald once famously opined in The Crack-up that “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” I think he was addressing his alcoholism, his despair, and the resulting tailspin of his literary output. Three in the morning must be a fairly desperate time–if […]
Where is the country now, more than two weeks after President-elect Joe Biden’s decisive victory? That place where the lost sock has decamped to, leaving its mate forlorn and forever unselected in the drawer. I could say the country resembles the abandoned sock, ever unworn, except for two things. First, unlike the locus of the […]
At press time, what most disappoints me about the 2020 Presidential Election is, actually, the electorate. Sure, Joe Biden has so far garnered north of 73 million votes–an all-time record–but more than 69 million have voted, inconceivably, after everything, for the incumbent. An incumbent who, at press time, is dishonoring the process with lies, lawsuits […]
Back in the day, as the saying goes, when we were actually in print, my wife, The Chief, used to pen a column called “Political Fix.” I remain convinced it was the best feature of the paper. She has abstained from that effort, largely because we have been shifted to an online presence, but I’ve […]
If you are anything like me, and would like to rudely unhorse our current commander in chief, there is no better way, metaphorically, than the tip of a lucky joust strike right through the eyehole of our president’s helmet–like Henry II suffered. Had he survived, Henry’s entourage were prepared to call him “Blinky.” Or “Left-turn […]
So The Donald has contracted the Covid. Finally. His flagrant disregard of it, his mockery of the entire situation of it–after going mocking , going after Joe Biden, and after sitting on his hands for seven months–after seven of months knowing how bad this disease is. He spoke of it so much so as early as […]
A month ago I wrote briefly about having been twice washed over the South Jetty of Humboldt Bay in early 1983. Folks, that jetty is 6,000 feet long, and we were a good two-thirds along that distance when the events unfolded. I was taken twice; scared to death the first time, and more angry than […]
In 1997, back when we lived in unspoiled Bahia Santa Maria–Google Montage Los Cabos; this was long before all that greed killed the cove–a whale and her calf entered our waters. And our waters were deep right up to the beach. In Bahia Cabo San Lucas itself the seabed is at 900 feet even before […]
Because I was rudderless at the time, my friend Tom encouraged me to come with him to attend College of the Redwoods near Eureka. In those days–and under the best of conditions–it was a six-hour drive from the East Bay, where we lived, often along narrow, two-lane road. Rain could make the journey so much […]
When the chips were down and Tulare’s hospital was in danger of going under Devon Mathis did exactly nothing–except take money from HCCA, the hospital’s former management company. Now that the chips are on the table again, in the form of an election, he has nakedly, cynically, grandiosely donated that money to the hospital’s foundation. […]