BECAUSE OF DARRYL CURTIS, I still say “deh-TAILS” instead of “DEE-tails.” Darryl was my boss at Santa Rosa news-talk radio station KSRO more than 20 years ago. To say I learned from him everything I know about radio reporting would…
Tag: people
Friends, Women, Countrymen: I’ll tend thee through years.
Death steals everything except our stories.”
— Jim Harrison
“Same To You” Redux
SOME YEARS AGO, I POSTED about a stress-free method for dealing with people who wish you a happy holiday-outside-your-affinity-group. In that spirit, I proffer it again for anyone who, like me, neither celebrates Xmas nor wishes ill on anyone who…
AMERICA IS A PLACE WHERE Jewish merchants sell Zen love beads to agnostics for Christmas.”
— John Burton Brimer
No Boomer I
WELL, THAT’S NOT QUITE ACCURATE — I am, at least technically, a Boomer. But I’m also a member of one of the Lost Generations. And I’m not the only one. I was born in 1962. That makes me, according to…
Points of Honor, Literary and Otherwise
– STUFFING SENTENCES TO JUST UNDER their carrying capacity. – Never starting a blog post with “I.” – Writing exactly to required or desired length. – Being there on time. – Repeating verbatim anything someone wants said to another. –…
The (Other) Giving Tree
BY A PATH IN SONOMA’S rustic Mountain Cemetery stands an oak tree bearing the creative goodwill of self-selected and diligent passersby. It began a few years ago, with three small figurines — a white winged angel, a faceless blue woman…
Tortured Gastronome
EVERY TIME ANTHONY BOURDAIN MAKES a reference on one of his TV shows to hanging himself in a shower stall, Ann and I swap meaningful looks. After all, that’s exactly how the 61-year-old chef, traveler, writer and raconteur ended up…
My Chanukah With Ramana
THE TECHNIQUE IS SIMPLE: JUST lay on your back, breathing, and take a complete and negative bodily inventory: “I am not my legs; I am not my feet; I am not my arms;” “I am not my mind;” et al.…
5 Thoughts: Long-Term Partnerships
1. TO QUOTE A CHARACTER FROM the most excellent film A Mighty Wind: “It’s almost as like we have one brain that we share between us.” The simultaneous realizations, the one-word sentences, the shared expressions … It can all be…
OKAY MOSES,” SAID GOD. “HERE’S another commandment: Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.”
“You mean, don’t eat meat and milk together?”
“No. Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.”
“You mean we should have separate dishes for meat and dairy?”
“No. Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.”
“You mean we should wait a few hours after eating meat before we eat dairy?”
“Moses,” said God,”do whatever the hell you want.”
Our Own Little “Zone”
IF YOU WERE CONSIDERED A teenage weirdo in the late 1970s/early 1980s in Northern California’s suburban Diablo Valley, you could always find a place on Friday nights at an independent cinema-house in Walnut Creek, gathering with others of your tribe…