Blog

Recently June 2026

Every day I think of things I want to tell you via my blog, and sometimes I jot those things down so I don’t forget, but mostly I don’t jot…

Todd’s New Blog Website!

Hello my readers! I have a new blog/web site. I told our good friend Marius Constantin, computer wizard and singer and all around great person, of my desire to simplify…

Planting Seeds

Now and then throughout my life, and I imagine now and then throughout your life, we wonder, “Why are we here?” I recently came out with a new album of…

Much Too Beautiful

My twentieth album of music Much Too Beautiful is now downloadable and streamable from myriad digital music platforms including Apple, YouTube, Deezer, Spotify, Amazon, and more. There are twenty-six tracks…

Warriors of Love

So our country has been taken over by criminals manipulating crazy people, and these criminals and crazy people have brought our country into a catastrophic war that will, at the…

While We’re Waiting

While we’re waiting for the undeclared war on Iran to end, it turns out I’m allergic to peanuts and therefore to peanut butter. Bummer. When I was a kid I…

Listen to Oasis Tales!

Exciting news. The audio book edition of Oasis Tales of the Conjuror and other stories delightfully narrated by yours truly is now available from Apple Books and Audible. I published…

Instead of War

Instead of war, we can spend a fraction of our current military budget every year and have comfortable, spacious, high-speed trains connecting every city in America and we can all…

Synchronous Positivity

I’m baking a big pan of granola as I’m writing this post. I made granola way back in the early 1970s in order to qualify as a Real Hippy, but…

Sorrow and Joy

I’ve been deeply sad and worried about the war being waged against Iran by our government and the government of Israel, and sad and worried about Iran fighting back and…

War and Spring

When I heard the news about America and Israel attacking Iran I was too upset to stay in the house so I went for a walk. I remembered the first…

Etchings in the Sand

For our first seven years here in the redwoods of Mendocino I stubbornly tried to grow things in the actual ground and failed bitterly. I would prepare the ground for…

News We’re Tracking

We’ve been having lots of rain this week, much needed, and the potholes on our street are now little muddy pools. I write to the Mendocino County Department of Transportation…

Cyrano De Nerderac

So last night I heard from my friend Jamie Roberts that he was going to be airing my story Cyrano De Nerderac on his show Radiogram on our local community…

Things On My Mind

When we moved into this house on these two acres fourteen years ago there were so many deer in the neighborhood one of the very first things we did was…

Livingry Versus Weaponry

The term livingry was coined by Buckminster Fuller. I first came across the word while reading Bucky’s final great work Critical Path, a book that literally changed my life. I…

Something New

My last post is now out-of-date and I want to post something new. I’ve been working on a new book for some weeks now and I like how the story…

Hulee On the Radio

Wonderful news! The audio version of my new book The Dog Who Wanted A Person aired on January 14 on our local community radio station KZYX, streamable from anywhere in…

I Got the Flu

The last time I had the flu was thirty-six years ago. Now I am nearing the end of Day 10 of this flu of 2026 and I am finally starting…

New Year 2026

Hello Dear Reader. We just hung up our two new wall calendars, one in the kitchen and one in my office. Next trip to town I’ll buy a tide chart…

Listen to The Dog Who Wanted A Person

Wonderful news! The audio book of The Dog Who Wanted A Person, an illustrated fable for adults and smart children narrated by yours truly is now available from Amazon and…

Endings Beginnings

A few weeks ago I realized that the book I spent the last year writing was not something I wanted to share with the world. I had finished the five-hundred-page…

Diana Needs A New Muffler

Diana Blumenfeld, a youthful sixty-two, her antecedents Ashkenazi Jews and Midwestern Methodists, pulls up in front of Wonderful Books and Things on Fremont Street in Portland, Oregon in her puke…

Early December 2025

A beautiful cold sunny winter day in Mendocino, I shot this picture of Marcia and Sally enjoying the moment together while Molly and I were engaged in the serious business…

The Way Things Were

When I chose to quit college in 1969, the economic reality in America was very different than it is today. By living frugally without a car or health insurance (doctor…

The Dog Who Wanted A Person

At long last I can announce the publication of the handsome paperback of The Dog Who Wanted A Person, an illustrated fable about a charming one-year-old dog named Huleekalabulee. On…

The Old King

There once was a king who took the reins of power rather late in his life and ruled his large kingdom with great cruelty and shortsightedness, his entire purpose self-enrichment…

Twenty Years On Halloween

Halloween 2025 was the twentieth anniversary of my arrival in Mendocino. My friend Bob Smith drove the big moving truck from Berkeley, and I followed him in a little old…

Working With Universe

The Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa wrote, “There is the wisdom of all-accomplishing action, in which speed does not have to be included in one’s working situation, but things fall into…

Word Origin Stories

In my ongoing perusal of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature, published in 1939, from time to time I come upon fascinating (to me) word origin stories and thought…

Fall Musings 2025

I have a friend, I think he’s still alive, who lives in Maine and says there are no seasons in California. Spoken like someone who has never lived in California…

Birthday Peace Prize

October 17. Today is my birthday. I am seventy-six. When I was born in 1949 there were not yet credit cards. For much of my life there were no such…

Various Colliding

October 5 was my dear friend Rico’s 74th birthday. Rico died five years ago and he’s always in my thoughts more than usual on his birthday. I communicate with Rico’s…

Ravens Apples Roses

We live in a particular part of the redwood forest near Mendocino favored by ravens, not to be confused with crows. The ravens in our neighborhood check out what’s going…

Gems From Larousse

During the pandemic I decided to read Larousse Gastronomique from start to finish, and I did. What fun. The 1200-page tome is considered by many to be the greatest culinary…

Mantis From Outer Space

We had a praying mantis hanging out in our rose bushes for a couple days recently. This was the first praying mantis I’ve seen since I moved to Mendocino twenty…

Moving Right Along

Life, you may quote me, is a trip. We’ve been without a functional well for a month and just got our water system back online today! We’ve got four cords…

Time Capsule Tidbits #2

Having had encouraging responses to my previous post featuring excerpts from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature published in 1939, a volume I love for being a delightful British-centric…

Time Capsule Tidbits

One of the few material possessions I inherited from my grandmother Goody is a book entitled The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature, first published in 1939 and reprinted in…

Extremely Local News

I grew sunflowers this year for the first time in several years and I’m so glad I did. Van Gogh bouquets for the table, gifts of bouquets for friends, a…

Tides of Change

So here we are and things are happening in the greater world and in our own personal worlds, and more and more lately I’m finding it difficult to separate the…

Gaza Dream

I'm at the Mendocino Farmers Market with my basket as I am every Friday. I'm about to buy some tamales when I look to the west and see a big…

Living In Fog

Twenty years ago while hunting for a house to rent in Mendocino, I had lunch with a local who gave me some valuable information about life here, including where here…

Good Things

Headlands Fleurs There is a boggy place on the headlands just to the south of Main Street in Mendocino where the flowers this year are more lush and spectacular than…

Robin Hood

In the myth I liked to enact as a kid, Robin Hood was a witty swashbuckler who didn’t have to help poor people and could have enjoyed the patronage of…

Parallel Worlds

Most of us live in many parallel worlds simultaneously. I don't mean parallel dimensions, I mean in this dimension we operate in several realities or mental states in the course…

Imagine No Dishonesty

I was trying to think of good ideas for signs to take to rallies in support of democracy and the rule of law in America. I came up with Imagine…

Portals To Other Dimensions

Our friend Deb Kvaka just gifted us with a quilt she made that we greatly admired, and when we mounted the beautiful creation on our living room wall we realized…

Things Happen

We were on the beach at the mouth of Big River and came upon these gulls making a big fuss about one of the gulls having a fish and the…

Gaza

I pray every day for an end to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Sometimes I pray by playing the piano and intoning Gaza while visualizing a…

Thrilling Audio News!

Hello dear readers. On the first of May – purely by chance – the streamable/downloadable songs from my wonderful new album Hip Salon AND the audio book edition of my…

Do Not Despair

Bad people, as my grandfather called them, thought they had successfully rigged the system so they’d win; and for a little while it seemed they had won. But because bad…

Love Warriors

What do we do now? The bad people, as my grandfather called them, are not just trying to destroy our country and the world, they are destroying our country and…

The Farm at the East Cove Hotel

Hallelujah! My new book is born. The Farm at the East Cove Hotel is now available as a handsome paperback. Copies may be ordered from your favorite actual bookstores and…

In the Meantime

Spring forward. Set all clocks an hour later than what they were previously set at. Henceforth one is two, seven is eight, and so forth. Einstein said many thought-provoking things…

On We Go

Seems like just a few moments ago we got the firewood into the woodshed for the winter, and now we must order more firewood to sit outside and season until…

Kindness

So what do we do in the face of this onslaught of cruelty? How shall we resist the Damaged One and his damaged appointees as they rush to do as…

Dream News February 2025

In my dream this morning, I am living in the little house I lived in forty-five years ago. The living room is dominated by a big table on which is…

Alternative News Feed

As Damaged Soul and Psychopathic Architect of Ruin continue to attack the foundations of American democracy with alarming success, and resistance seems frighteningly slow to develop among those who should…

The Age of Narcissism

So. Here at the outset of 2025 the new regime is settling in and we now know the direction our leader and his cohorts wish to take our society. We…

Executive Orders 2025

I lay down for an afternoon nap on this cold foggy January 20th 2025 and immediately fell asleep and had a vivid dream in which I was about to be…

Communiques to the Photographer

January 8, 2025 The photographer was standing on the Mendocino headlands when he saw an angel on Portuguese Beach. The photographer said he had his eyes closed and was sending…

Gently With Love

This morning, January 6, 2025, after a stint of writing and a bowl of granola and a bit of piano playing, I set off for town in our little red…

Things To Consider in 2025

Going to the Good People A few weeks before my grandfather Casey died, I visited him in the Alzheimer’s facility where he was housed. I hadn’t seen him in several…

Seasons Greetings 2024

This morning I drove into town to mail a few things at the post office. Today is December 17 so I expected there would be a line of people sending…

What’s Coming?

I’m sure you’re wondering what will happen when Trump assumes the Presidency in January. His cabinet nominees are a scary lot, their collective incompetence and venality breathtaking to behold, and…

Early December Mendocino 2024

Sunny and cold, the big rains of November behind us. Yesterday an earthquake shook the coast from Oregon down to San Francisco and beaches and harbors were evacuated for a…

Tooting Own Horn Gift Suggestions

Just wanted to remind you that if you are looking for wonderful gifts for your fiction loving friends, for your dog and/or cat loving friends, for your friends who like…

Reminder

I was feeling bereft about the election results and the direction the country and the world are going in. I was in anguish about the ongoing genocide in Palestine and…

Why We Lost

I don’t usually write abut politics, but today I will in response to many of my friends wondering how anyone, let alone a majority of Americans, could vote for such…

Hummingbird Yum

We recently changed the name of our two-acre place from Skunk Hollow to Hummingbird Hollow. Why the name change? First an anniversary update. As reported on October 17, I turned…

On We Go

The 2024 election is over. Donald Trump won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College totals and will be the next President of the United States. And what…

Mom and the Election

Yesterday was Halloween. In a few days there will be an election I believe will either mark the beginning of a major disaster for America and the world, or will…

75

Amidst the uproar of a world in chaos, I was born seventy-five years ago. Now in these more peaceful times… no, wait. Other way around. In those peaceful times in…

Acting Chops

I’ve reached an interesting phase in my writing of the novel currently occupying much of my psyche, a phase in which my acting chops come more and more into play.…

Gestation

I’ve just completed the third draft of my novel The Farm at the East Cove Hotel. I printed out the three-hundred-page manuscript last night and I’ll let the tome rest…

Story of the Story

Last night at quarter-to-nine, I got a call from Jamie Roberts who has the long-running show Radiogram on our local public radio station KZYX. He was calling to say that…

Who Are We?

In a way, we are what we do. Or what we’re doing. When I’m chopping kindling and making a functional sculpture, I’m a kindling chopper sculptor. * In another way,…

Summer 2024

This is by far the warmest summer I’ve experienced in Mendocino since I moved here eighteen years ago. I’ve now lived here longer than anywhere I’ve ever lived. This amazes…

Two Mattress Fables

When I told Marcia the stories I am about to tell you, she said I should write them up and post them on my blog, so here they are. Mattress…

All Of Me

Her antecedents Italian-American and French, Sophie Vacarro is thirty-six and has lived in Japan for three years as apprentice to master potter Arata Inaba. Sophie’s return to Mercy where she…

Pequeño and Cha-Cha

Carlos Garcia and Ophelia Viera were both born in Mercy fifty-one years ago, Ophelia in April, Carlos in October. They have been happily married for twenty-four years and have two…

Pooches and Kiddies

Rejoice! My new book Pooches and Kiddies: the further adventures of Healing Weintraub is now all here. By that I mean the handsome paperback, the various e-book editions, and the…

Gloria’s Play

After twenty-three years of delivering mail to the far reaches of the Mercy zip code, Carlos Garcia now works in the Mercy post office where his fluency in Spanish and…

Leo’s Words

Agatha Ionesco got her degree in Studio Art from Barnard College in Manhattan when she was twenty, and then stayed in New York City supporting herself as a waiter while…

Saint Carlos

Carlos Garcia, a Mercy native, started working for the Mercy postal service when he was twenty-seven, just three months after coming home from an eight-year stint in the Army. Carlos…

The Painter

Mercy Bay is calm this April morning, the fog in no hurry to move offshore, the air chill, though not terribly so, and the only person on the beach at…

The Good Daughter

Mary Vaccaro is fifty-three and has lived her entire life in the small town of Mercy on the far north coast of California. She has three beautiful daughters by three…

Juno’s Genius

A seven-year-old dog of no obvious breed, Juno is medium-sized and slender with short brown fur and pointy ears. Her primary human is Cecilia who recently found a mate named…

Sir Garth

From the outset of my friendship with Garth Hagerman, I began my emails to him with Sir Garth. I sent him hundreds of emails over the years using this opening…

The Skeptic

Michael, a burly bearded biochemist, and Daphne, a lithe longhaired librarian, have been mostly happily married for twenty years despite a great divide in their views of reality. Daphne believes…

Dreamland

Theo wakes from a dream about Louise, a woman he knew fifty years ago. They were never lovers, though in Theo’s dreams he and Louise have children, walk their dogs,…

The Young Man From Leipzig

The beach at the mouth of the Mercy River is cloaked in fog as it often is on summer mornings on the far north coast of California, though soon the…

In Cabo

Bertram is on vacation in Cabo San Lucas. Tall and gangly with a mop of graying red hair, Bertram works for a large Internet Technology company in Cupertino and spends…

Seven Thoughts In May

You are unique and you are like everybody else. Your ship won't come in if you didn't send a ship out. Up and down do not exist independently of each…

Fox Hollow Critters

A fox family lived on the edge of our property for our first few years in this house a mile inland from the town of Mendocino, so we decided to…

News In Pictures

Gull Having Fun This gull was obviously having fun goofing around with the little wavelets rippling over the big flat expanse of stone. Was he/she simultaneously looking for something to…

Stories In America

A reader recently wrote to say she enjoyed hearing about my beginnings as a writer. This got me musing, and as I mused I remembered that most people, including people…

Who Was I?

I was twenty-one when I wrote my first novel. I’d written several dozen short stories by then and a few really long stories, but I was full of trepidation about…

Changed My Life

My uncle David Walton died eleven years ago at the age of eighty-six, at which time I posted a brief remembrance of him. Uncle David. This remembrance elicited dozens of…

Ahora Entras Tu

Our new album Ahora Entras Tu is here! We’re so glad to be able to share this suite of new piano songs and piano/cello songs with you. The album contains…

Who We Were

I subscribe to the Buddhist idea that happiness arises from living fully in the present moment. Yet as a subscriber to this idea, which I know to be true, everything…

Writing Table

Todd in 1996 at his writing table in Berkeley with Ruby & Spear The year was 1995, a mere twenty-nine years ago when I was but an overgrown child of…

How I Came To

Todd (upper right corner) A reader inquired about Good With Dogs Cats, “How did you come to write this book?” Here is a long-winded answer. I began making up and…

Making It

Today is a glorious day, sunny and cloudy and sunny. The storms that besieged us for the last few weeks are behind us, power restored after a few annoying outages.…

Dear Healing

As reported here not long ago, Todd has a new book out entitled Good With Dogs and Cats: The Adventures of Healing Weintraub. Paperback copies, e-book editions, and audio book…

D.R. Wagner

The poet and artist D.R. Wagner died on the Winter Solstice 2023. I just got word from his neighbor in Locke on the Sacramento delta. I cried and cried when…

Bucky and Karma

I am the owner of my own karma. My happiness and unhappiness are determined by my actions. That is part of a Buddhist prayer expressing the brahmaviharas: Loving-kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic…

Reason and Rhyme

When I was a young writer, I wrote hundreds of poems and even managed to publish a few. The first writing I ever published was a poem in the legendary…

Work Report: January 2024

When I would ask my friend Quinton Duval how things were going, he would first report on his poetry, then update me on his wife Nancy, and lastly he might…

Life Story

I am small and helpless. People carry me and feed me. I learn to walk and follow those people until I am grown. One day we come to a fork…

Singing Along Again

Some of you let me know you enjoyed singing/reading along with my song The Way Things Go from my album Lounge Act In Heaven, and one of you asked for…

Sing Along

Ricky and Kathy were lovers in high school, then Ricky went away to war I recently heard from three people (unbeknownst to each other) who told me they really like…

Brief History of Audio Books

Todd with the third draft of Volume Two of the Healing Weintraub Adventures, several more drafts to go As I gleefully reported in my previous post, the audio book of…

Healing Speaks!

Joyful news! The audio book of Good With Dogs and Cats: The Adventures of Healing Weintraub is now available from Audible and Apple Books and other audio book purveyors. I’m…

There Comes A Moment

there comes a moment when our strength departs and we can no longer walk against the ferocious wind. So we change direction and our nemesis becomes our loving friend, the…

The Healing Novel

Dear Friends I have wonderful news for those of you who enjoy the Healing Weintraub stories. The first twenty-six stories have been transformed into the novel Good With Dogs and…

Helping Garth

Our good friend and web master and graphics wizard, Garth Hagerman, he who is responsible for our web sites and the web sites and graphic and computer and publishing needs…

Beasty and the Beaut

Time capsule. Buried treasure. A lost story I’d forgotten was lost because I’d forgotten I ever wrote the story. On Easter 2023 I received an email from my friend Richard…

Golden Memory

Corners produce Today I was in Corners, the small grocery store in Mendocino where I shop two or three times a week, and a song emerged from the music mix…

Iterations

Generally speaking, when artists or writers or musicians talk about the creative process, I run away as if pursued by a monster. Not only do I find such talk nonsensical,…

Spring Things

circa 2016 When we first moved to our two acres in the redwoods eleven years ago, I endeavored to grow vegetables in the ground despite the warnings from neighbors that…

Guitarist from New York

I went to bed last night thinking about fences and walls. We recently removed a large section of the old fence topped with barbed wire that surrounded our two acres…

Backpacking

I learned how to backpack from my father in the 1950s, and in the 1960s I was fortunate to go backpacking with some of the people who had the first…

More Reality

I was recently on the table of Bibi, our most excellent acupressurist, and as she pressed hot points on various meridians in my left foot, she asked with some urgency,…

Reality

Our friend Jeff said to me the other day, “I don’t believe in reality.” I wish I could remember what I said to him right before he said that, but…

Who Knew?

When I was a little boy and I would tell my grandfather Casey something I thought was terribly important or interesting, he would feign amazement and say, “Who knew?” The…

Fascinating Life

Goody (far left) and Casey (far right) and Howard (in the back) with my mother and father, my sister Wendy on my father's shoulder, my sister Kathy beside me, circa…

Practice

At last atop the mountain we catch our breaths and look back at the sound of avalanche as the path of our ascent vanishes beneath a great collapse. When the…

On We Go

What a wonderful terrible fabulous frightening exciting perilous hopeful disastrous promising time we live in. Our friend Abi came to visit. We spoke of aches and pains and aging and…

Through the Fire!

Dear Readers (and Listeners) Through the Fire, our new album (CD), has just arrived! Nine gorgeous musical numbers featuring Todd playing piano and Marcia playing cello, with Todd singing on…

Healing Adventures

Dear Reader If perchance you have been following the adventures of Healing Weintraub, we are pleased to tell you the saga has reached a turning point. Which is to say,…

Author Interview

Interviewer: Aren’t you afraid the title of your new collection of stories Why Are You Here? might be a bit overwhelming to prospective readers? The magnitude of the question? Todd:…

Todd’s New Book

Dear Friends I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book Why You Are Here and other stories — fifteen tales of self-discovery, love, survival, friendship, creativity, and…

Speak Your Feelings

When I was eighteen, I began doing daily writing exercises of my own invention with the goal of becoming a good enough writer to one day sell stories to magazines…

Through the Fire

I’m in the throes of making a new album of songs entitled Too Much Noise – eight new songs and two older tunes I wanted to record again. Much of…

Just Be

If you are over sixty-years-old, you probably remember when the expression Be Here Now escaped the confines of Buddhist teaching and, after a brief time as a popular battle cry…

Myriad Things

Reading about recent discoveries in neuroscience regarding how the brain develops during our first few years of life, I’ve been recalling many things about my time as a preschool teacher’s…

How To Start Over

I recently read a mind-boggling book entitled The Secret Life of the Mind: how your brain thinks, feels, and decides by Mariano Sigman. Fortunately, I had fairly recently read several…

Imagine A Song

The following idea sprang from a scintillating exchange with my open-minded pal Max Simple Song (Shy) piano solo by Todd

Hoo-Ha & Considerata

Perhaps you recall Something like What You Do In Ireland piano solo by Todd

Albert & Sylvan

* * * * fin Love's Body piano solo by Todd

The Double (from 2008)

My last post was First June Morning. My referring to Andie MacDowell in the post elicited five responses, which is close to the record number of responses to anything I’ve…

June First Morning

Another day, another month in the year 2022. I flip the page on my Klimt calendar and find a lovely painting of a woman who reminds me of the actress…

Parsley Pesto

Parsley harvest from two big plants For much of my life I believed pesto had to be made with basil. De-stemming parsley takes a long time. A kind of meditation…

Haircuts (from 2018)

My last blog entry was a re-posting of a piece entitled Children from ten years ago. Much to my delight, a few readers let me know they very much enjoyed…

Children (from 2012)

Having recently posted the nine scenes composing George Is Writing A Play, I am now immersed in making a new album of songs and getting ready to bring out my…

George Finishes His Play

Joan and George’s living room. A fire burning in the hearth. Joan, 72, and Marilyn, 75, actresses and retired psychotherapists, are sitting on the sofa with scripts in hand. Joan’s…

Walter Auditions For Saroyan

A stage and the first row of seats in a small theater in a small town on the coast of Oregon. The unseen seats are filled with people auditioning for…

Walter’s New York Denouement

An exclusive restaurant in Manhattan. Tess Adams, eighty-three, a legendary actress, is dining with Arthur Fields, a very successful actor in his late thirties. They have just been seated. Their…

Walter Demolished

The spacious living room and kitchen of a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Walter, an actor and writer in his early thirties, is sitting at the kitchen table writing a play. He…

Walter Breaks Down

The spacious living room and kitchen of a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Walter, an actor and playwright in his late twenties, is lying on the sofa under a comforter, staring at…

Walter Meets Maureen

A party at Jeremy’s apartment in Manhattan. Maureen, an actress dancer in her thirties, is standing near the table laden with food, talking to Terry, an actress in her twenties,…

Walter Meets Vincent

The spacious living room of a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Vincent, an actor in his thirties, has lived in New York for ten years. His roommate recently moved out, and Vincent…

George Workshops A Scene

Joan and George’s living room. A fire burning in the hearth. George, a retired English professor, is working on a new play. Tonight he has invited Clare, a young actress,…

George Is Writing A Play

Joan and George’s living room. A fire burning in the hearth. Joan and Marilyn, actresses and retired psychotherapists, are sitting on the sofa drinking wine. Joan’s husband George, a writer…

No I

I’ve been reading Joseph Goldstein again, his instructions for meditation, and he repeats many times there is no I. Yet I feel I am me. He says the more I…

Connecting

rice I am hoping to never have a smart phone. I don’t need one (as long as landlines are available) nor am I suited neurologically for such a device. I…

More Historical Musicals

My first piece in this series, entitled simply Historical Musicals, ranks as one of my most popular blog postings ever. By that I mean I heard from three people who…

Discipline

In the days of yore when I taught writing, many of the people who took my workshops and consulted with me had previously read books about writing that directed them…

Writing Exercise

Long ago, I held writing workshops in my living room. There were eight people in a group, and I was one of the eight. We met once a week for…

A Paragraph

Paragraphs, as I’m sure you know, are collections of sentences usually related to each other. If a paragraph is the first one in a story or essay, it introduces what…

Beginnings

baby collard greens Here I am starting to write a story I’m calling Beginnings. This is the beginning of the story. Or is it a story? Maybe this is a…

Words Words Words

My mother told me that until I was two-and-a-half, I barely spoke. She said this was because my two older sisters, close to me in age, would intuit what I…

Thoughts On Art & Culture

Marcia showed me a cartoon e-card today of some people on a bench in an art museum looking at the most famous of Monet’s water lily paintings. After a moment,…

Remembering Wars

I woke from a nightmare I can’t remember and had the feeling it was about the war in Ukraine. Before I got up this morning, I remembered other wars that…

Returning Stones

Ganesh and bowl Today I noticed the white water bowl on the big flat rock in front of our Ganesh statue was in need of cleaning, so I brought the…

When I Had a Beard

Todd at nineteen on Santa Cruz beach In 1968, at the beginning of my second (and last) year of college at UC Santa Cruz, I grew a beard and kept…

Buddha Rocks

We planted this stone statue of the Buddha under our American Cranberry Viburnum and placed some other large rocks found on our property nearby. Our friend Deb gave us a…

Audi Memory

An Audi drove by. I knew it was an Audi by the trademark symbol of the four interlocking rings. Every time I see an Audi I am reminded of an…

Appointed Time

(I copied this parable from Kim by Rudyard Kipling, with a few minor changes for the sake of clarity. Kipling got the story from the Jataka, a vast collection of…

Memories of Ireland

My friend Max recently sent me an excerpt from his journal written when he and his wife Kate were sojourning in Ireland some years ago. Reading about Ireland as Max…

Reading Ruby & Spear

I just finished reading my novel Ruby & Spear, which was published in 1996. The novel, ostensibly about basketball, is set in San Francisco and Oakland in the years just prior…

Mendocino Winter Pictures

The year is 2022 and we’re having an odd winter in Mendocino California. I say this based on my sixteen winters here and from talking to folks who have been…

Are Ravens Smart?

We live on the fringes of a redwood forest at the end of a little lane where there are many ravens. For the most part, we love the ravens, love…

Pictures of Goody

my grandmother Goody I recently made a little video for YouTube called Bubulah in which I tell a Jewish joke my Jewish grandmother Goody told me when I was a…

Guitar Lesson

On our walk the other day, Marcia and I were talking about teaching and I was put in mind of the one guitar lesson I had in my life. I…

Lemon Marmalade

lemon tree in tub Marcia and I just finished making our second batch of lemon marmalade this year, the big beautiful Meyer lemons we used coming from our two prolific…

Joan’s

Joan’s is the only stationery store in the town of Mercy on the far north coast of California, and if sales continue to decline as they have for the last…

Buddha Birds

You want to talk about Buddha consciousness? Check out birds. They live entirely in the moment. Have to. Surviving in the natural world requires constant vigilance. Get distracted and something…

Raven Sky Dance

Raven Sky Dance each the other’s shadow before they fly apart, one tracing a figure eight in the blue, the other swooping in a circle. How distinct they are until…

Hello Again

Dear Readers, This is a note to my subscribers and is about my most recent post (the one before this one). For technological reasons beyond my understanding, notice of my…

Hello Out There

Dear Readers, This is a note to my subscribers and is about my most recent post (the one before this one). For technological reasons beyond my understanding, notice of my…

Seed Puffs

Green Salad Bowl lettuce This year I grew a kind of lettuce I’ve never grown before. Green Salad Bowl. I got the seeds from Territorial Seed Company. For growing in…

Historical Musicals

One of my hobbies is randomly reading bits from the massive one-volume Columbia Encyclopedia. Lately I’ve been finding entries I think would make successful Broadway musicals now that Hamilton has…

Mrs. Davenport

In a blog entry from 2010, I wrote: Mrs. Davenport, my Third Grade teacher at Las Lomitas Elementary School, was from Oklahoma and proudly one-eighth Cherokee. She was the most…

Miss Imbach

I was one of the “smart” kids in my Las Lomitas elementary school classes, learned the minimal info we had to learn with ease, and when in Third Grade we…

The Psychic

Twenty-five years ago, when I was forty-seven and living in Berkeley, I had a three-month relationship with a woman who lived in Los Angeles. In the course of our brief…

Mama

a story from Buddha in a Teacup “Can you tell me,” asks Sweeney, handing the teapot to McDougall, “what this is worth?” McDougall, a portly man with a gray handlebar…

The Rug

Marcia and I are thinking of getting a new rug for the living room, our ten-year-old, four-hundred-dollar Cost Plus rug from India badly frayed from constant heavy use. Marcia has…

End of Saga

Dear Readers, A few days ago the Ziggurat Farm stories ceased to materialize, which means From Whence is the final story of the saga that began with the first Nathan…

From Whence

In the early morning of December twentieth in their little house on the outskirts of the northern California coastal town of Mercy, the resident trio of Delilah, Nathan, and Celia…

Mothers and Fathers

On a rainy Monday morning in mid-December on Ziggurat Farm, two miles inland from the northern California coastal town of Mercy, Vivienne and Andrea are working together in the farm…

October Wedding

The first day of October. Evening. Fall in full swing. No rain yet this season in the Mercy River watershed of northern California. After supper at Ziggurat Farm, two miles…

Being In Love

On a warm sultry afternoon in early September, Delilah is alone in the big soaking tub in the bathhouse on Ziggurat Farm, two miles inland from the northern California coastal…

Early Summer

June eleventh, a sunny Tuesday morning on Ziggurat Farm, two miles inland from the town of Mercy on the far north coast of California. Henri, a fast-growing lad of twelve,…

Lips

In late April, on a foggy Saturday morning in the small town of Mercy on the far north coast of California, Delilah, the only child of deceased movie star Margot…

Digging

Last Thursday, April 12, on Ziggurat Farm, two miles inland from the remote northern California coastal town of Mercy, the homeschoolers Vivienne, Alma, Henri, Larry, Arturo, and Irenia, ages eleven…

The Pond

Now that he is no longer an aspiring academic, Michael Darling, forty-three, tall and good-looking, is letting his curly brown hair grow long for the first time in twenty years.…

The Brits Return

For their first breakfast since getting back from England to the northern California coastal town of Mercy after a two-year absence, Constance and Joseph Richardson dine in the Ziggurat Farm…

Being Here On Earth

Henri is twelve, exactly twelve, as twelve as he can be. Five months ago he was four-foot-nine and now he’s five-foot-three. A beautiful muscular lad with curly brown hair, his…

fawns

doe and fawn dormitory A circle of large redwoods stands on the northern edge of our two acres and is made into a dense thicket by several smaller trees growing…

July flowers

rose parade just opening daisy more to come

Spirit Beings

On December 17 in his little house on the edge of Mercy, a small town on the far north coast of California, Nathan wakes in darkness just before dawn and…

Frisson

“Something extraordinary happened to me today,” says Delilah, twenty-six and strikingly beautiful with dark brown hair cut very short, housemate of Celia and Nathan for thirteen years now. “Of course…

We Both Know

Everett and Marlene, both seventy-four, both professors emeritus at the University of Vermont, both undeniably eccentric, have been married for fifty-one years. They are the parents of Michael, an ornithologist,…

Ziggurat Farm School

On August 27, after their third day of Seventh Grade at Mercy K-8, Arturo, a handsome lad of twelve, and Irenia, a lovely lass of thirteen, walk along Jousting Street…

Who Is Your Audience?

Nathan is eighty-five, spry, in full command of his senses, and very much enjoying his less strenuous life after fifty years of pruning fruit trees for a living. He lives…

Beauties

Raul Neves is one of the most famous chefs in the world. Born in the Portuguese coastal city of Aveiro, Raul is the ruggedly handsome son of a fisherman named…

Irenia

On the second of February, a Friday, in the thriving northern California coastal town of Mercy, the day dawns icy and clear after three days of rain. Toby, the tall…

Finding Our Place

Michael Darling is forty-two, strong and wiry with longish brown hair, an ornithologist recently freed from academia by his wife Daisy inheriting a fortune from her mother. He is now…

People Go Away

Everything happened so quickly, the denizens of Ziggurat Farm, grownups and children alike, are having a hard time adjusting to the new reality. In mid-September, Hilda, who just turned eighty-five,…

Life in the Country

On a cold morning in March, Lisa is giving Tamara a massage in Hilda’s cottage, a stone’s throw from the farmhouse on Ziggurat Farm, two miles inland from the town…

Philip’s Kitchen

Philip’s first cookbook Delicious Meals for the Somewhat Ambitious Cook sold twenty thousand copies and was not reprinted after the third printing sold out. The tome has since become a…

About Money and Love

In April, the remote northern California coastal town of Mercy is in an uproar because Tom Holsinger died in a car accident before he could finalize the transfer of his…

The Great Transformation

In March, with the completion of the five-room cottage and bathhouse, Lisa and Philip and their children Arturo and Vivienne, move all their furniture and possessions from the farmhouse into…

Three Dog Farm

The eight acres and two houses and the big redwood barn and several other outbuildings owned by Philip and Lisa and Andrea and Marcel are exactly two miles inland as…

The Vineyard

On a very cold morning in November, on the outskirts of the small northern California coastal town of Mercy, a husky old man named Nathan and his eighteen-year-old accomplice Delilah,…

Arturo and Vivienne and Henri

Arturo is five, Henri is four, and Vivienne is three. Arturo and Vivienne are siblings by blood, Henri their brother because he’s always been one of the three as soon…

The Waiter Contemplates Fatherhood

Sandra Messer, sixty-seven, a native of Chicago, her short gray hair colored dirty blonde, is the legendary owner/chef of Le Scélérat in Berkeley, California. While shopping at Monterey Market on…

The Waiter Considers Psychoanalysis

“Have you ever been attracted to psychoanalysis?” asks Hilda Rubenstein, nodding her thanks to Philip as he sets a goblet of white wine before her. “Are we speaking of undergoing…

The Waiter

Philip is forty-seven and has been a waiter in fine restaurants for twenty years. Handsome with dark brown eyes and curly black hair kept short, he is innately graceful and…

Fifteen

This story is a continuation of Almost Fifteen, which is the fifth story in the Nathan and Del series. Almost Fifteen and Fifteen may be enjoyed together without resort to…

Almost Fifteen

This story springs from the previously posted Nathan and Del stories, and might also be titled Nathan and Del Part Five. Almost Fifteen may be enjoyed without resort to the…

Constance and Joseph

This story springs from the previously posted Nathan and Del stories, and might also be entitled Nathan and Del Part Four, though Constance and Joseph may be enjoyed without resort…

Our Run To Starved Rock

Todd and Dick 1969 The summer after my second year of college, 1969, as I was deciding whether to go back for another year of academe or take my chances…

Cecil B. My Father

The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. Cecil B. DeMille From the time I was a…

Nathan and Del Part Three

On a brilliantly sunny day in March, Nathan and Margot sit on the deck of Nathan and Celia’s house waiting to be called to the dining table for a lunch…

Nathan and Del Part Two

Celia is still in her bathrobe as she sits at the dining table having a second cup of coffee while Nathan does the breakfast dishes, the morning cold and rainy.…

Nathan and Del Part One

Nathan Grayson, his once brown hair mostly white now, is seventy-three, sturdy and healthy and still pruning fruit trees, Japanese maples, roses, and lemon trees fifteen hours a week from…

Amidst the Wreckage

Zeke notes the exquisite form of the oncoming wave, turns his surfboard to face the shore, brings his legs up onto the board behind him, executes four powerful butterfly strokes…

Rodin Driftwood

All the photographs in this article are of the same piece of redwood. On the Spring Equinox the sunlight came down through the skylight at just the right angle to…

Art Installation

dear max, Today’s Max Portrait is one of my favorites in the series so far, for all sorts of reasons. Your focus in the moment illustrates what I’m aiming for…

Fifth Conversation With Emily

Emily, thirty-five, a marriage and family therapist, and her son Andre, twelve, live with Emily’s father Neal, sixty-seven, a community college English professor. On a lovely sunny day in May,…

Fourth Conversation With Emily

A warm sunny day at the beach, Neal, sixty-four, a community college English professor, is sitting on a big beach blanket with his daughter Emily, thirty-two, a marriage and family…

Third Conversation With Emily

Neal, sixty-two, arrives home in suit and tie from the community college where he is an English professor, and is greeted by his dog Niko, a big friendly five-year-old mutt.…

Second Conversation With Emily

Neal, fifty-seven, a community college English professor, is sitting at the kitchen table in his house with his eighteen-month-old grandson Andre drowsing on his lap. Neal’s daughter Emily, twenty-five, is…

Conversation With Emily

Neal, a man in his late forties, is walking barefoot on a vast beach with his sixteen-year-old daughter Emily, who is barefoot, too. The day is sunny and warm, the…

Cozy Fart Head Mozart

There once was a dog named Cozy Fart Head who was the reincarnation of Mozart. We realize that may seem implausible, but tell us something that isn’t essentially implausible. We…

Chinese New Year Stories

Happy Chinese New Year! “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke 2021. Year of the Ox. I just made a new outgoing message for my answering…

Friendship Dialogues #3

This is the sequel to Friendship Dialogues #2. Mark is about to jump on his bike and ride the mile through a neighborhood connecting Berkeley and Oakland to Marlene’s house…

Friendship Dialogues #2

This is the sequel to Friendship Dialogues #1. Mark is sixty-four, a book editor and denizen of a neighborhood where Berkeley morphs into Oakland. Though the pandemic rages on, he…

Friendship Dialogues #1

This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #9. Mark is sixty-four and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Despite the strictures of the pandemic, he had five dates with…

Relationship Interview #9

This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #8. For their fifth official date since meeting through Find The One, a relationship web site, Bernice comes for breakfast at Mark’s house…

Relationship Interview #8

This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #7. Mark and Bernice have gotten together in-person four times since they met through Find The One, a relationship-starting web site. Bernice is…

Relationship Interview #7

This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #6. Mark and Bernice have had three dates since they met through Find The One, a web site for people seeking life partners.…

Relationship Interview #6

This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #5. Bernice is fifty-seven with brown hair going gray. Mark is sixty-four with gray hair turning white. They met through Find The One,…

Relationship Interview #5

(this is the sequel to Relationship Interview #4) Mark and Bernice met through Find The One, a web site designed to assist people in their search for life partners. Their…

Relationship Interview #4

Mark and Bernice meet through Find The One, a web site designed to assist people in their search for life partners. Satisfied with what they intuit about each other from…

The Cook and the Mouse and the Cat

Francois This is a story about a woman named Genevieve. She is a cook for two writers who live in a beautiful house in Lausanne, not far from Lake Geneva.…

Rosalind Finds the Plot

On a warm day in August, Rosalind Peoples is taking a bath in a huge white claw-foot bathtub with enormous brass fixtures, the bathroom filled with summer sunlight. Rosalind and…

Only Be Rosalind

Dez Peoples is sixty-six, an American poet living in Lausanne, Switzerland with her daughter Rosalind, who is twenty-eight, a photographer and writer. They have lived in Lausanne for three years…

Rosalind and Dez In Lausanne

This is the sequel to Rosalind's Choice. Dear Katrina Rosalind here, hoping all is well with you and the gang at Café Bleu. I’ve taken to writing actual letters again…

Coastal Drama Games

In 1972 I was living in a commune in Santa Cruz and piecing together my minimal living by working for three bucks an hour as a landscaper and house painter…

Rosalind’s Choice

This is the sequel to After Rosalind. The only child of a well-known American poet, Rosalind Peoples always thought she would be a poet, too, but at twenty-five has yet…

After Rosalind

This is a story about Desdemona Peoples, known to her friends and those who read her poetry as Dez Peoples. She works at Oberon’s, the only stationery store in town,…

Without A Story

There once was a man who made his living writing funny short stories. The man’s name was Azben Hummingbird and the stories he wrote came to him unceasingly for fifty…

Ego Chronicle #17

Todd's bud vase made in 1966 Just prior to my senior year of high school, much to my parents’ dismay, I decided not to continue on the science and math…

Todd’s New Oasis

I’m happy to announce the publication of my new book Oasis Tales of the Conjuror and other stories. Some of you may be familiar with my science-fiction novella Oasis Tales…

What’s In A Name? Revisited

I recently read aloud to Marcia part of my essay What’s In A Name? I originally posted the piece on my blog ten years ago. We had several good laughs…

6. Future Life

Near the end of Stephen Ornofsky’s performance the audience is laughing so hard, Stephen has to wait several seconds for the laughter to subside before he can say anything else,…

5. More Than Genetics

Stephen Ornofsky is in shock. Two hours ago he thought he was embarking on a love affair with a woman he believed might be his partner for the duration, and…

4. Her Makeup

Early on a sunny Saturday morning in June, Stephen Ornofsky sits in a big wooden chair on the deck of the beautiful one-story redwood house where he lives in Melody,…

3. Stephen Ornofsky

“Celia will be here any minute,” says Maya Johansen, small and slender and seventy-seven, confined to a wheelchair for the last fifteen years. “Go on now, Stephen. You’ll be late.”…

2. The Songster

Joseph Ross and Carmen Fernandez are making a movie together with the working title Funny Love Story. Joseph is seventy-five, a movie director emerging from several years of creative dormancy.…

1. Funny Love Story

A longtime resident of Melody, a small coastal town in northern California, Joseph Ross is seventy-four, healthy, friendly, attractive to women, and thrice divorced. A few months ago, after three…

About Chimpanzees

Mom and Dad I was on a date with a woman twenty years ago and there came a moment when she asked me a question and I replied, “I don’t…

Raven Mystic Part 5

Obidiah the Cummings Lane raven mystic was perched on the edge of his new roost high in a giant gnarly old redwood named Tree. Obidiah had just eaten two delicious…

Raven Mystic Part 4

On a drizzly morning in late October, Obidiah the raven mystic and his seagull pal Marcus and ten of Marcus’s gull buddies flew north from Big River to a little…

Raven Mystic Part 3

On the day after Madge the beautiful Cummings Lane gal raven turned down his marriage proposal, Obidiah the raven mystic decided to seek out his two non-raven bird friends, a…

Raven Mystic Part 2

A few days after Obidiah the raven used his mystical proclivities to help Isadora the human move on from her unhappy marriage, and having impressed a gal raven named Madge…

Raven Mystic Part 1

There once was a raven named Obidiah. He was five-years-old and belonged to a small community of ravens who roosted in the redwoods around Cummings Lane, a mile inland from…

Birthday 71

When I was six-years-old, sitting at my desk in Mrs. Bushnell’s First Grade class, I became aware that though I had the brain and body of a child, I was…

Gate of Ten Thousand Things

My dream from a few mornings ago. I am in my office with an old friend and his young son. We are looking out the window at the metal gate…

Mr. Nail

I’m fascinated by how we learn things. I recently read that there seems to be a strong correlation between the elimination of handwriting from the American school curriculum and the…

Insect Poems

In a recent exchange with Max about poems and poetry, Max inquired of two poems I wrote in the early 1970s that are the first poems I published, both appearing…

The Destiny of Our Intentions

Dimitri wakes from a dream in which he was speaking to a woman who died a few years ago. The woman was telling him about what goes on between death…

Morning Visions

Waking heavy-limbed, my first conscious thought is If we were not meeting Sally and Molly at the beach this morning, I would surely sleep for another couple hours. But we…

What To Be

When we were children in the 1950s and 60s, adults would often ask us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I don’t recall any adults asking…

Course of Life

Buddha's Buddha Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can go when things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get. Tom Stoppard I take…

Lizard Song and Smoke

rose in smoky light Max wrote: I had a very productive morning working on my book about lizards only to wake and find it was but a dream. I wrote…

September Fires

wood shed door Yes, it does feel somewhat odd to be building fires in the woodstove in early September when much of California is literally on fire and inland temperatures…

Lemon Trees Very Pretty

honey bee on lemon blossom Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet When we moved into our house eight years ago, I wanted to have two lemon…

Foggy Beach Dog

Probably wouldn't have gotten out of bed so early today because it was foggy and cold, but I'd arranged to meet Sally and Molly on Big River Beach for a…

Skunk Holler Prune Plum Jam

Prune plum blossoms When we took possession of our house at the end of the pavement on Cummings Lane eight years ago, our eight apples trees and one plum tree…

our farewell visit

This was my last conversation with Vito before he and his parents left Mendocino for their new life in Switzerland. Vito: Todd, I want to tell you something about my…

The Rico Chronicles: Inside Psychodrama

Rico with his daughters Rachel and Sarah circa 1990 photo courtesy of Steve Rees This is the fourth and final article in a series commemorating my friend Rico Rees, AKA…

The Rico Chronicles: 1966

Guild Theatre, Menlo Park circa 1967 This is the third in a series of articles commemorating my friend Rico Rees, AKA Richard Rees. ∆ March 1966. Menlo Park, California About…

The Rico Chronicles: Bye Bye Birdie

Joe Tiffany and Rico in Bye Bye Birdie 1966 My great friend Rico Rees, AKA Richard Rees, died recently at the age of sixty-eight. To celebrate Rico and the myriad…

The Rico Chronicles: First Sighting

Rico at Fourteen with his father photo courtesy of Steve Rees My great friend Rico Rees, AKA Richard Rees, died recently at the age of sixty-eight. To celebrate Rico’s life,…

Zemel and the Pope

Several hundred years ago, when the Vatican was a powerful city state and the Pope commanded a great army, Jews escaping trouble in Europe and the Middle East settled on…

Little Movies Reviews

My book of short stories Little Movies came out just as we began to shelter-in-place in mid-March of 2020. I didn’t plan to bring out a book simultaneously with the…

The Same Woman (Donna Again)

October 2021. Andrew is seventy-three and a widower now for two and a half months. Having eaten little since Luisa’s death, he is thinner than he has ever been, his…

The Same Woman (Sakura)

2018. Andrew and his wife Luisa are both seventy, their birthdays a few weeks apart. They are in good health, Andrew descended from Ashkenazi Jews, Luisa from Chippewa Quebecois Afro-Cubans.…

The Same Woman (Helen)

Every so often in his life, Andrew meets a woman he recognizes as someone he has known forever, though he has never seen her before. The first time this happened…

The Same Woman (Maru)

Now and then over the course of his life, Andrew encounters a woman he feels he already knows, though he has never met her before. The first time was in…

The Same Woman (Donna)

Every so often in his life, Andrew meets a woman he feels he already knows, though he has never met her before. The first time this happened was in 1955…

The Same Woman (Margot)

Throughout his life, Andrew meets women who are immediately familiar to him, though he has never seen them before. He met the first when he was a little boy in…

The Same Woman (Jennifer)

Every so often throughout his life, Andrew meets a woman he recognizes as someone he knows, though he has never seen her before. He met the first of these women…

The Same Woman (Luisa)

Over and over again in the course of his life, Andrew meets a woman he recognizes as someone he has known before. He met her in elementary school in 1955,…

The Same Woman (Carol)

Several times in the course of his life, Andrew meets a woman he recognizes as someone he has known before. And though the woman never recognizes Andrew as anyone she…

The Same Woman (Yvonne)

Every few years Andrew meets the same woman and always recognizes her, though she never recognizes him as anyone she’s known before. The first time they met was in elementary…

The Same Woman (Laura)

Andrew meets the same woman every few years and immediately recognizes her. She, however, never recognizes him as anyone she’s known before, though she is always pleased to meet him.…

The Same Woman (Sara)

Every few years Andrew meets the same woman and always recognizes her, though she never recognizes him as anyone she knew before. They met for the first time in elementary…

Banana Blueberry Apple Jacks

Here is my recipe for 9 big delicious gluten-free banana apple blueberry pancakes. One: Put a cup of sorghum flour or millet flour or a half-cup of each in a…

The Same Woman (Alice)

You know those movies like Groundhog Day wherein a character keeps waking up and reliving the same day over and over until he learns whatever the universe wants him to…

Little Movies Goes eee

Several weeks ago I announced the publication of Little Movies, my new book of fourteen short stories, refined versions of stories I posted on my blog a couple years ago.…

Those People

Maybe we were just moving too fast before the pandemic and before the shelter-in-place orders went into effect to notice what was going on. Maybe we weren’t here as much…

Vito’s Birthday Surprise

an adventure starring Vito, Jeremy, and Doofus There are three best friends named Jeremy, Doofus, and Vito. They live in the same neighborhood. Doofus likes building interesting wooden structures and…

Diego Kelly Gets A Glimpse

Think of this as a fable or a fairy tale, but whatever you do, don’t think this could possibly be true. Diego Kelly is sixty-four. He has an older sister…

Ongoing News

These three beautiful does are sisters. Seen from our north-facing living room window, their mother is partially visible far left center, obscured by the deck railing. The four of them…

More Big News

This is our three-year-old White Winter Permain apple tree. A few years ago I wrote a blog article entitled Of Apples and Accordions in which I mentioned the White Winter…

Big News

I might have called this News, but thought the addition of Big would attract more readers. These are some of the foodstuffs we recently purchased from our wonderful food co-op…

Life Goes On

Summer days and nights in Mendocino can be as cold or colder than winter days and nights here, so we heat our house year-round with a highly efficient woodstove. We…

Essentials

One of the largest trees in our garden is a blossoming cherry, a tree that blooms for a few weeks every year but does not bear fruit. For our first…

Easter 2020

yellow farmhouse can something be too yellow? young potato plant buried half sprouts and erupts japanese maple branches laden with unfurling butterfly wings new leaves tender promise of summer shade…

Haiku Breakfast

potato chunks atop grated zucchini — a promising start three eggs with a dollop of salsa — mix well skillet grows hot squash and taters sizzle egg and salsa meet…

Galaxy Rover Report #3

Star Date: April 9 Kung 127238 We are all feeling a bit chagrined today, and no one more so than our Chief Science Coordinator. Turns out since day one of…

Galaxy Rover Report #2

Star Date: April 5 Buddha 2723 What an amazing planet is this Over Easy. Every minute of every hour our data collecting pods and sensors and communicators reveal new and…

Galaxy Rover Report #1

Star Date: April 3 Hebrew 5780 Seen from afar, the planet is most attractive. Tantalizing glistenings and myriad gradual indentations and smooth surface flows suggest presence of copious oils, solids,…

Little Movies

Dear Readers, I’m pleased to announce the birth of my new book Little Movies: tales of love and transformation, a collection of fourteen contemporary short stories. Dramatic and often funny, these compelling…

Testing Recombobulated Blog

There have been updates aplenty to the UTTB blog. Perhaps, the automatic user notification thingie is working again. The fact that you're reading this confirms that the automatic user notification…

Second Friendship Gate

So a couple months ago, Dexter Jones built a friendship gate in his back fence connecting his yard to his neighbors’ yard. Those neighbors happen to be siblings: Godfrey and…

Dexter and Melody Go Out

On a warm afternoon in May, Dexter Jones, forty-six, gets home at five from his job of delivering packages for UPS in Springfield, Oregon, undresses in his garage, drops his…

Friendship Gate

When Dexter and his neighbor Godfrey finish building the gate connecting their backyards, they decide to hold a celebration. Dexter invites one of his best friends, Luis, who is fifty-three,…

Dexter Digs Up His Lawn

Dexter was so looking forward to a lusty week at Happy Valley Retreat Center, but the love-in got cancelled because of the dang virus that’s going around, and going around…

Love-In Cancelled

Dexter is totally bummed. He’d arranged to take a week off from work, had the car tuned up for the long drive, gotten all the requisite tests for sexually transmitted…

Something Of A Clean Freak

I want you to be safe. I don’t want you to get sick. I want you to live a long and happy life. That’s why I’m hoping you’ll get into…

What I Meant About Bernie

Yesterday, my friend Max wrote to me: There's a sentence in your recent post "Why not Bernie?" that I keep wondering about. You say, "And yet by choosing Biden over Sanders…

Why Not Bernie?

Here’s what I think. I could be wrong, but I think this is true. The elite billionaires and millionaires who have controlled the Democratic Party for the last forty years…

Bernie and Precious Dream

I’m voting for Bernie Sanders and contributing to his campaign because he is the only person in my lifetime, seventy years, who wants what I want for our society and…

Delineations

Though they are as different as night and day, they like hanging out together. They are about the same size. They both enjoy surfing and sunbathing and meditating. They are…

Vietnam

Cold sunny day, I’m having a sandwich on our south deck, sitting next to the clothes drying on the line, the sun brilliantly illuminating my inside-out black T-shirt and Marcia’…

birds and monster and dog

Every day a man drives his old car into Mendocino, parks across the street from the old Oddfellows Hall, and throws food scraps out for the ravens. We came upon…

Studio Time

This is the story of a song that came out a finished work the first time I played it, never having played it before. This had never happened to me…

Sometimes It Seems

  So there I was in early 2019 in our house a mile inland from Mendocino, creating songs for Lounge Act In Heaven. New music and lyrics were coming with…

The Way Things Go

Last week’s blog entry recounted the origin of the song “Sugar Mornings” from my new album of songs Lounge Act In Heaven. Since posting that article I got an email…

Sugar Mornings

Last week’s blog entry recounted the origin of the song “You Are The One” from my new album of songs Lounge Act In Heaven. Readers continue to let me know…

You Are The One

Last week’s blog entry recounted the origin of “Light Song” and how I came up with the title for my new album of songs Lounge Act In Heaven. Readers seem…

Light Song

Last week’s blog entry recounted the origin of ‘A Wedding Song’, one of the twelve songs on my new album Lounge Act In Heaven. Having heard from readers that they…

A Wedding Song

I’ve just come out with a new album of songs Lounge Act In Heaven and I’d like to tell you the origin of one of the songs: A Wedding Song.…

honing: necessary delusion

If you ever come to the little town of Carmeline Creek on the far northern coast of California and do more than stop for gas, you will almost surely find…

honing: the quorum

On a cold rainy morning two days before New Year’s Eve, Elisha Montoya, a beautiful woman with reddish brown hair, stands behind the counter of Mona’s, the one and only…

honing: the fourth

On Christmas day in Carmeline Creek, a small town on the far north coast of California, Elisha Montoya, fifty-one, and her husband Paul Windsor, fifty-eight, make their annual walk around…

honing: the seven

At a table in Mona’s, the one and only bakery/cafe in the remote California coastal town of Carmeline Creek, the December morning drizzly and cold, Ephraim Spinoza and Paul Windsor…

honing: arrival

In early November, someone from out of town leases the building three doors down from Mona’s, the only bakery and café in Carmeline Creek, a small town on the far…

Here To Explore

Vito With Guitar I dream that Marcia and Abigail and I are in our living room, a fire burning in the woodstove, darkness falling, Abigail and Marcia wearing dresses. There…

only connect

photo Mary On the Piano by Robert Smith In my dream I am playing a beautiful black grand piano in a large restaurant, all the tables full, many of the diners…

Light Song

here there are no endings only tides of change here the path goes ever wending through forests born of rain   there’s a shadow of a raven gliding over fields…

Sweet

  There’s a light on the hill at the end of the day, That’s as sweet as the sweet yellow rose. I would give you this flower if only it…

Jewish Jokes Redux

my grandmother Goody at a Hollywood party with Red Skelton and William Bendix Author’s Note: Here we are nearing the end of 2019 and a few days away from my…

Telling Jokes

When I was seven I became interested in learning to tell jokes. My father and mother never told jokes, and the jokes I heard at school rarely appealed to me,…

Going Out Into The World

Going Out Into the World: a screenplay for a short movie The film begins with a slow fade to a close-up of a foggy mirror transected by runaway drops of…

Ann’s Friends

throw-a-kiss-to-the-sea painting by Nolan Winkler ANN’S FRIENDS: a screenplay for a short movie The film begins in black and white. Dusk. The exterior of a small café seen from across…

We Might Be Friends

Volume of Greenstreet photo by Todd Paul Windsor, late fifties, bespectacled, his longish gray hair turning white, is sitting at his customary corner table in Mona’s, the one and only…

That’s All Right, I’m Okay

Author’s Note: I wrote the short story That’s All Right, I’m Okay in 1980 when I was thirty-one and performing my stories and songs in cafés and small theatres. The…

Alexandra’s Dream

A few days before Christmas, Alexandra Windsor, a lovely young woman about to turn seventeen, comes to visit Herschel Steinberg in his old white house at the end of Climbing…

What Are Dreams?

On a rainy morning in November, Alberto Puerto Vallarta, Paul Windsor, and Herschel Steinberg share a table in Mona’s, the one and only bakery/café in Carmeline Creek, a small town…

The Dream Interpreter

Leona Mozart, forty-nine, wearing a baggy gray dress and clunky brown shoes, her long brown hair gathered and compressed into a tight bun, her face masked by large black-framed glasses,…

The Brick Wall

An avowed atheist, James is sixty-seven and has lived in Seattle for fifty years. A fastidious dresser and vain of his appearance, James bristles whenever he hears the words spiritual,…

The Angel

On an early morning in August, Derek drives to the beach at the mouth of Big River for the very low tide. He wades across the wide shallow river to…

Release

They are fly fishing in the Applegate River together, standing in waist-deep water, facing downstream, their lines parallel in the fast-moving flow. Fred has fished for steelhead in this river…

Mean Mister Leo

Leo had become, as it were, the telephone through which the humans spoke to one another. He was a large, lazy cat with yellow eyes and a dull gray coat.…

Meet the Musicians

Mrs. Musician, Irish through and through, her short silvery gray hair adorned with a just-picked pink rose, espies Mr. Musician at the far end of their bountiful garden—a quarter acre…

Election

The evidence against them was overwhelming. We explained their crimes in simple terms. Our facts were unassailable. We exposed their villainy to the bright light of day on hundreds of…

cloud song

  who made that blue so deeply blue?   who made those clouds go sailing by? who wrote that music in the sky?   maybe she who made the blue…

Coney Island Dream

dear Todd, I had a very pleasant dream this morning. You’d written a short play in which a bunch of guys crammed into a cab and were driven to Coney…

Guitar Case

When and Where: This morning in Mona’s, the one and only bakery/café in Carmeline Creek, a small town on the far north coast of California What: I, Paul Windsor, fiftyish,…

Orange Juice and Beads

Where in the world: Carmeline Creek, a town on the far north coast of California, population not quite a thousand Where in Carmeline Creek: Mona’s, the one and only bakery/café…

Dream of You

Hello dear readers, I’m pleased to announce the birth of my new album Dream of You, featuring nine of my original songs for guitar, piano, and voice. One of these…

The Movie Biz

My fourteen-year-old daughter Alexandra has launched a movie company, Windsor Montoya Productions, and I have agreed to work for her as an idea person, writer, actor, and caterer’s assistant. Elisha,…

The Tuner

My daughter Alexandra, who is fourteen, recently announced she is launching a movie company, Windsor Montoya Productions, and would like me to work for her. She has already hired her…

Alberto Puerto Vallarta

My son Conor, who is seventeen, is intrigued by systems. In an earlier draft of this story, I wrote, “My stepson Conor is passionate about the interconnectedness of the myriad…

The Sleep Doctor

Elisha and I have been married for two years now and I learn something new about her every day. Yesterday, for instance, I overheard her say to her daughter Alexandra,…

Life With Libby

For my sixth birthday in 1955 I got to choose the puppy that would be my dog and our family’s dog for the next twelve years. Cozy was part German…

Willing To Pretend

Okay, so I’ve been in love with Elisha Montoya for four years, three months, two weeks and five days. I know with such exactitude because in my desk calendar for…

The Fox

Rex Abernathy died six months ago. When news got around that he had left his four-bedroom house on three-acres and a large amount of money to Elisha Montoya, more than…

Two Piano Benches

In 1980, with money from the movie sale of my first published novel, I bought a new Yamaha U-7, a teak upright piano, and I still have the exquisite instrument—a…

Promise of Joy

I live in a small town. I won’t tell you the name of the town because I don’t want swarms of people descending upon us to get a look at…

Five Wisdoms

Some years ago, while reading a book by the Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, I was especially intrigued by the following passage. “There are five types of genius, five wisdoms. There…

Tober Finds His Way Part 4

Early on Tuesday morning, two days before Thanksgiving, a light rain falling, Tober and Augie load the last of Augie’s things into their pickup, cover everything with a brown waterproof…

Tober Finds His Way Part 3

At four-thirty in the afternoon, rain falling, Tober drives slowly through a maze of streets to a quiet neighborhood in southeast Portland where Augie lives in an old house with…

Tober Finds His Way Part 2

On the third day of their new life in the farmhouse at the end of Snake Creek Road, Amelia and Consuela wake in their bed to the sounds of Sharon…

Tober Finds His Way Part 1

  On a cold morning, nine days before Thanksgiving, on the far northern coast of California, nineteen-year-old Tober Quincy stands behind the checkout counter in a big store known as…

Pruning & Practice

    Pruning Before I touch blade to branch I walk twice around the tree, studying the relationships of the boughs. Then I cut to enliven the tree with spaciousness. …

Maybe’s Good Used Stuff

Dylan Russell, forty-seven, widely known as Maybe, owns a store called Good Used Stuff on Highway 211, two miles inland from the mouth of the Eel River on the far…

Augie and Tober’s Quest

On April seventeenth, just a few days ago, Sharon Quincy asked her sons Augie, twelve, and Tober, thirteen, if they will approve whole-heartedly of her marrying Alex, a dear friend…

Three Poems

            NOT SURE WHAT KIND Small brown birds with gray chests and yellow mohawks, birds I have yet to identify, arrive in our garden every…

Colleen’s Guitar

On a rainy Saturday morning in April in Mountain Home Idaho, Gig Antonelli, fifty-four, his graying brown hair in a short ponytail, sits on a small burgundy sofa in the…

Gig’s Baby

Lucinda, a breakfast waitress at the Backwoods Cafe in Yakima Washington, a roly-poly brunette in her forties, her hair in a bun, her nametag pinned to her black vest, saunters…

Beckman’s Daughter

Julian Beckman, thirty-nine, is known only as Beckman to everyone except his mother and daughter. Beckman’s mother Alta, who is eighty-three, calls him Jewel, and Beckman’s sixteen-year-old daughter Jasmy calls…

Dane’s Uncle

On a cold clear evening in late April in Mountain Home, Idaho, Dane Langley, seventeen, attractive and easy going, with his mother’s dark brown hair and olive skin, stands with…

Bernard Comes Of Age

Bernard Borenstein is seventy-years-old, a wiry five-foot-nine, with short frizzy gray hair growing whiter by the day. A charming person with a pleasingly deep voice and an infectious sense of…

Tober’s Stones

Tober Quincy is nine-years-old and quite tall for his age. Highly intelligent and intuitive and talkative, his dark brown hair has yet to be cut since he was born and…

Raymond’s Band

Raymond’s partner Tina will sometimes tease Raymond by saying he loves his guitar Susie more than he loves her, which Raymond doesn’t think is true, though he does love his…

Karen at the Bookstore

Karen Constantine is fifty-four and has worked at Studio Books for eighteen years. Studio Books is the only bookstore in the coastal town of Deep River, California, a five-hour drive…

Mrs. Espy and the Hippy

Her name is Elvira Espy, Elvira Jeanine Espy, but everyone who knows her, save for her brother Scott, calls her Mrs. Espy. Scott calls her El, and on those rare…

Sid Writes A Song

Sid Lawry is sixty-two and has been a waiter at Falcon, a most excellent restaurant in Lambertville, New Jersey for the last fourteen years. He has lived in Lambertville since…

Marvin and the Cat

At dusk in late October in the far north of California, Marvin Rees, forty-two, gazes fixedly out one of the three south-facing windows in the living room of his spacious…

Lila’s Crisis

On a warm September day in Los Angeles, Lila and Desiree are having salads and smoothies for lunch at Boffo, a hip eatery on Sunset Boulevard. Lila is thirty-three, Desiree…

Wade Rises From the Sofa

Wade stops walking, looks around the neighborhood he’s lived in for forty-five years, and says, “What am I doing?” A few minutes ago, he was sitting on the sofa in…

Naomi Drives To Portland

Naomi can count on one hand the number of times she’s left the greater Los Angeles area since she was born in North Hollywood sixty-two years ago. When she was…

Zelman’s Van

Zelman was born and raised in a middle-class suburb of Philadelphia. His given name is Zachariah Elman, though as far back as he can remember, which is thirty years to…

Juneau’s Farm

Waiting For the Moment painting by Nolan Winkler Two years ago, at the age of forty, Frederick Scott divorced his wife of seventeen years, gave up his life as an…

The Screw

Elk Cloud photo by Todd in the spirit of Isaac Bashevis Singer In the large coastal town of Croft’s Landing, Oregon, there are three hardware stores: Anderson’s, Pirelli’s, and Lowenstein’s.…

Ophelia’s Journey

Winter Woods painting by Nolan Winkler Born in Visalia, California, the fifth of seven children in a tempestuous Italian family, Ophelia Martinelli is fifty-seven and has been a legal secretary…

Frank’s Muse

Heart of Muse photo by Todd Frank was thirty and lived on a monthly check from the state: four hundred and sixty-eight dollars. His rent for a small room in…

Undivided Self

Standards by Max Greenstreet (click on image to enlarge) “I would suspect that the hardest thing for you to accept is your own beauty. Your own worth. Your own dignity.…

Pre-recording Recording

Monster Box photo by Marion Crombie I wake up thinking about you, go to bed doing the same. The monsters in my nightmares spend the whole night whispering your name.…

Best Laid Plans

The Far Fields painting by Nolan Winkler To accomplish your task, you must have a clear intention of what you wish to accomplish. You’ve probably heard those words or a…

Lyrics

new place diptych by Max (click on image to enlarge) So I was in the post office a few days ago mailing a package to North Salem, New York, and…

Dream Songs

Basketball Guitar photo by Todd “One does not dream; one is dreamed. We undergo the dream, we are the objects.” Carl Jung For two consecutive mornings recently I woke from…

Sleep

Oasis painting by Nolan Winkler Ten days ago I woke at eight in the morning feeling utterly exhausted, as if instead of sleeping I had walked fifty miles while arguing…

Terrible Chairs

Four Brits and a Yank photo by Todd (click on photo to see larger) “There are some terrible chairs in the world,” said Ruth, Abi’s sister, as we were enjoying…

Centered Gull

Gull Capture photo by Todd In the novel I’m writing, one of my characters says, “I don’t believe in luck.” She doesn’t explain why she doesn’t believe in luck, but…

Critters

Ganesh's Bowl photo by Todd Two years ago our big gray cat Django got hit by a car and died, and we were sad for a time and thought about…

Summertime

Summertime photo by Todd Marcia and I walked into town via the beach on Saturday, the most summery day of the 2018 Mendocino summer so far, warm and sunny with…

Rebirth

Outside My Office Window A few weeks ago, the large four-year-old doe with a nest in a remote corner of our property sauntered by the house followed by her two…

Guitar Porn

music sex love drawing by Todd “The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.” Lou Reed I recently started playing the guitar again after a ten-year hiatus,…

Cambridge

I Must Go Into the Sea Again painting by Nolan Winkler Christine, the most excellent gluten-free baker of Mendocino, delivered some bread recently and mentioned she’d just returned from Boston…

Old Perry

Paloma photo by Todd “The backers accept that they don't know what they are going to get.” Mike Leigh Forty years ago, I wrote a short story called Old Perry.…

Morning Coffee

Blessed Brew painting by Nolan Winkler “Get out those coffee beans and grind’em just so, make us both a cuppa real good joe.” from Todd’s song Real Good Joe I…

Minus Tide

Molly Waiting photo by Todd Marcia and I met Sally and Molly at Big River Beach for the extraordinary minus tide on Friday morning—Sally our human friend, Molly a Golden…

Opening Words

Big River Meteor photo by Todd “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.” Carl Jung I like to write letters to friends and to…

Meaningful Life

Arno photo by Todd “There is the wisdom of all-accomplishing action, in which speed does not have to be included in one’s working situation, but things fall into your pattern.”…

Mirror Neurons

Shadow photo by David Jouris I was sitting in the Mendocino Taqueria waiting for my tacos when a man and woman came in, the woman carrying a three-month-old baby boy…

Little Bit Of Talent

“Japanese psychologists claim they have taught pigeons how to tell a Picasso from a Monet with 90 per cent accuracy. However, the birds were not able to tell a Cezanne…

Be Good To Yourself

Lunch Break photo by Todd “The writer of any work, and particularly a nonfiction work, must decide two crucial points: what to put in and what to leave out.” Annie…

Work Surfaces

“There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Stephen Stills I’ve been reading Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s autobiography Dreaming of Lions. Near the beginning of her memoir, she tells…

Haircuts

Before the Cut photo by Marcia Sloane “You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery Today, the first of April,…

Hey Baby

Petit point for Night Train cover by D.R. Wagner “Listen to the wind as it blows through the trees, listen to her and listen to me, listen to your heart and listen…

Seals

Tilly, Molly, and Flynn photo by Todd Harbor seals have spotted coats in shades of white, silver-gray, black, or dark brown. They grow to six feet in length and weigh…

Person

sharp photo by Max Greenstreet When I taught writing, long ago, one of the most illuminating exercises I gave my charges was to have them write a little something in…

Democracy

Headlands and Sky photo by Ian of Zo “Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself.” Conan Doyle In 1972 I was living in a twelve-person commune in Santa Cruz, part of…

Olden Days

Still I'm Still Here painting by Nolan Winkler  A friend recently (2018) sent me an article about a small vacant lot zoned for a single-family dwelling in Palo Alto, California,…

Foreign Accent Syndrome

Abi and Todd photo by Marcia In case you missed this widely disseminated news report from a few days ago, a woman in Arizona woke up speaking with a British…

Recipes of Alexander Skåll

I am very happy to present here the first two chapters of my new novel The Recipes of Alexander Skåll. In a nutshell: Andrea Valeraine, a French photojournalist, has been searching for…

Thinking

Perception pen and ink by Todd Descartes wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” Which is the English translation of the French “Je pense, donc je suis.” Which is Descarte’s translation…

I Will Play Chico

Moments That We Save painting by Nolan Winkler I Will Play Chico         a cinematic poem I want to make a movie, a modern variant of the…

Of Birds and Irony

tracks photo by Max Greenstreet “For when you see that the universe cannot be distinguished from how you act upon it, there is neither fate nor free will, self nor…

One Thing Leads To Another

Blacks and Goldens photo by Todd For several years in my childhood, there was a sentence I repeated to myself when I was riding my bike or walking home from…

Parts

Bred in the Bone painting by Nolan Winkler   The picture is imperfect, partial.   As when it’s said: “I am partial to”              Kate…

Going Around Again

Hymn To The Gentle Sun “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.” Lewis Carroll If I had a dollar for every person who said…

Her Children (Otra Vez)

tires diptych by Max Greenstreet Earlier this year, 2017, I brought out a collection of eighty-three of my essays and memories entitled Sources of Wonder. I had been meaning to…

Renaissance

Balance photo by Marcia Sloane “If you are depressed, you are too high up in your mind.” Carl Jung We went to an excellent modern dance concert yesterday afternoon given…

Sex & Power

Swept diptych by Max Greenstreet “As if layers of lies could replace the green illusion; or the sophistries of failure, the stench of success.” John Fowles As part of my…

The End of Something

“In the Eskimo language there are four future tenses: the immediate future, the middle future, the far-in-the-future future and a future that will never arrive.” Robert Littell I just got…

In the Beginning

Calvin: Dad where do babies come from? Dad: Well Calvin, you simply go to Sears, buy the kit and follow the assembly instructions. Calvin: I came from Sears? Dad: No…

Being Jewish

Goody photo by Todd “The writer of any work, and particularly a nonfiction work, must decide two crucial points: what to put in and what to leave out.” Annie Dillard…

So It Turns Out…Part Two

Todd & Casey “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on children than the unlived life of the parent.” Carl Jung Part One of So It Turns Out…arose from my recent…

So It Turns Out…Part One

Winton & Waltons “I was curious by nature. I observed the grownups, their behavior. I listened attentively to their talk, which I sometimes understood and sometimes did not.” Isaac Bashevis…

Three Bananas

did diptych by Max Greenstreet (click on image to make larger) The laboratory of Luigi Idano and Tamara Whozat. Various experiments underway. Luigi, male, hirsute, portly, prone to sweating. Tamara,…

Do I Know You?

moon door diptych by Max Greenstreet “Man is constantly watched by powers that seem to know all his desires and complications. He has free choice, but he is also being…

Moronic Individualism

“We are in crises where we are finding that the old systems don’t work. But that sort of disillusionment is only discovering that what you thought was so, isn’t. It’s…

Oregon

Rita photo by Todd “He walked joyously, triumphantly, through the peace and beauty of springtime in California.” Katharine Grey My great grandmother Katharine Grey wrote a pair of novels Rolling…

Magical Dancer

Vito & Clare photo by Todd “I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.” William Stafford As I mentioned in a recent article, though I’ve been playing the piano…

Know Your Audience

Chapbook Of Water and Melons “Truth is a great flirt.” Franz Liszt A few decades ago a short novel came out in America that became a huge bestseller. I won’t…

What Comes Around

What Comes Around photo by Todd “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.” Bertrand Russell So the other day…

Tales of the Heat

Sunflowers & Redwoods photo by Todd “One of the big questions in the climate change debate: Are humans any smarter than frogs in a pot? If you put a frog…

Stuff of Dreams

totality diptych by Max Greenstreet “We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” Shakespeare There’s an old vaudeville routine in…

Old Souls

ladder up diptych by Max Greenstreet Isaac Bashevis Singer, one my favorite writers, wrote several stories set in pre-holocaust Poland about children who are thought by their Jewish elders to…

Postcards & Notecards

Card Quest notecard and postcard by Todd I love the postal service. I love getting letters and postcards and packages. I’m sixty-seven; thus for much of my life there were…

Twins

Twins photo by Todd We were visited this morning by the twin fawns who share these woods with us, and today our coming to the window to look at them…

High Summer

High Summer photo by Todd Woke in the middle of the night. I’ve been sleeping well lately, so I wondered why I was awake. Wide awake. And then I remembered…

Medicine Birds

Hawk pen and ink by Todd Long ago when I lived in Sacramento, someone gave me Medicine Cards, a book and accompanying deck of cards written by Jamie Sams and…

Four Grandmothers

Once upon a time there were four grandmothers who were best friends—Tamara, Myra, Amy, and Vivienne. They first met when they were young mothers with children in the same elementary…

Heat

190 Moon diptych by Max Greenstreet I do not do well when the temperature goes much above eighty degrees. I lived in Sacramento for fifteen years in a house without…

Found Stuff

168 three diptych by Max Greenstreet Wandering through town today, mobs of tourists here for the long Fourth of July weekend, a man hailed me and said, “Do you know…

Playing for Capra Redux

Cat & Jammer photo by Marcia My new book of essays and memories Sources of Wonder has garnered some wonderful feedback from readers, with two correspondents saying they were especially…

Tender Fearless

Rose In Morning Light photo by Todd The following is a revamped version of Falling Behind, an article I first published in 2011. I was moved to revisit this article…

Wild Animals

Chavita On A Galisteo Starry Night painting by Nolan Winkler “Of all the lessons I have learned from the natural world, the most compelling is this: thousands of different kinds…

Of Apples and Accordions

Thinking of You by Todd “Around 50 to 65 million years ago, the apple ancestor separated from its Rosaceae cousins on the evolutionary pathway.” Dr. Roger Hellens Long before there…

Paterson Jarmusch

Queen and Jack drawing by Todd   Objects have names (what our dreams come to). “It’s what I want.” Begin asking.           Kate Greenstreet We recently…

Weekly Offerings

Twelve by Todd “The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” Allan K. Chalmers I was nearly forty when it first…

Bill and Ted Arrive

129 Things photo diptych by Max Greenstreet “Four score and…seven minutes ago, we, your forefathers, were brought forth upon a most excellent adventure, conceived by our new friends: Bill and…

Bumble Buzzing

Spider Web photo by Todd “That buzzing-noise means something. You don’t get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without it’s meaning something. If there’s a buzzing-noise, somebody’s making…

Self-Archaeology

Rolling Wheels and Hills of Gold by Katharine Grey “Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.” Thomas Aquinas Recent excavations on the shelves of my office have turned up some long-forgotten…

My Grandmothers

Goody with Bill and Red  “Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity.” Kahlil Gibran  Whilst thoroughly cleaning my office, something I do every five years whether the office needs cleaning…

Huckleberries

Turn Left At the Moon painting by Nolan Winkler “For when you see that the universe cannot be distinguished from how you act upon it, there is neither fate nor…

Mutant Ideologies

Something Greater We Could Be painting by Nolan Winkler “Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself.” Alexander McCall Smith In 1968, when I was nineteen,…

The News

(a story from Todd’s novel of stories Under the Table Books) I don’t have much, but there’s one thing I treat myself to every Wednesday, and that’s a newspaper, fresh…

Inside Moves Miracles

Inside Moves Pharos Edition  I began writing the novel that would become Inside Moves in 1974, when the United States was on the verge of withdrawing from Vietnam. I was…

The Beggar

Buddha Statue photo by Todd a story from Buddha In A Teacup Each morning on her way from the subway to her office in the pyramid building, Cheryl passes hundreds…

Wrong Ending

Four Editions of Inside Moves photo by Todd “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” George Orwell A few weeks ago I had an…

Little Men

Vito and Todd and Marcia photo by Clare Bokulich “For every complex problem, there is a simple solution. And it’s always wrong.” H. L. Mencken Marcia and I recently watched…

Ignorance

Strength painting by Nolan Winkler The earwigs are a plague on the garden. Jonathon—a thickset man with an unruly gray beard—wanders up and down the rows of decimated bean plants…

Pollination

Winter Mint photo by Todd “When the flower blossoms, the bee will come.” Srikumar Rao Well, maybe not. With bee populations in decline worldwide and the so-called civilized world in…

Going Bananas

Going Bananas photo by Todd In Woody Allen’s movie Bananas, one of Woody’s earlier, funnier films, there is a scene in which the leader of a successful rebellion in a…

Facts

Now I'm Sailing painting by Nolan Winkler “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Martin Luther King I recently watched several interviews with…

Circus Maximus

Clowns drawing by Todd “I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or…

Carrying On

And the dog walked, walked… painting by Nolan Winkler “Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.” William Stafford We are feeling pampered and special because…

Captain Fantastic

Vito & Todd photo by Marcia “We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves, and those who think through others. The latter are the rule, and the former…

Earth Sorrow

Winter Buddha photo by Todd  “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To…

Here’s To You

You You by Todd “We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works…

Reflections

Dancing In The Shadows painting by Nolan Winkler “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some…

There We Were

La Entrada (Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company) ©2016  David Jouris / Motion Pictures “It takes a long time to become young.” Pablo Picasso When Marcia gave me the news of…

Just Us

The Magician (Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company) ©2016  David Jouris / Motion Pictures “In 1978, Proposition 13 passed with almost 65% of those who voted in favor and with the…

Two Love Stories

love story photo by Todd Here are two brief love stories from my new novel Magenta. Henry’s Story When I was a senior in high school at Fort Orford High…

Solar Postage Socialist

Goldens photo by Todd “At a time when the Post Office is losing substantial revenue from the instantaneous flow of information by email and on the Internet, slowing mail service…

Cali Nation

Last Little Carrots photo by Todd Marcia and I woke the morning after the election to the sounds of Waste Management trucks picking up the recycling cans, and my first…

Bob Kevin Culture

Windmill Sky photo by Todd “There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won’t.” Annie Lennox For a few weeks this past summer…

Screen Time

News photo by Todd “In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.” Mark Twain Dipping into the national news for the first…

Nice Wealthy

Paloma photo by Todd I met a man the other day I described to a friend as “a nice wealthy person,” and my friend was curious to know why I…

Camera

First Picture by Todd In the days before digital cameras, I had several bouts of being a serious photographer, serious in the sense of owning good cameras, taking thousands of…

Sweet Libby’s

Queen For A Day painting by Nolan Winkler “Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.” Romeo and Juliet There are days when things…

Home Court

Old Ball photo by Todd “There are only two reasons why people fail. One is irresponsibility. The second is fear.” Wally Amos I have been enjoying the occasional stint in…

Magenta Queen

Magenta cover “There are two kinds of comedy.  One involves putting people down, having fun at their expense. The other recognizes that each of our lives is equally absurd.” Donald…

Luz

Ampersands thanks to Max So it’s Friday and I’m having one of those mornings where I feel certain the universe is an all-powerful sentient being picking on me for no…

Gene and Grandma

Mischief painting by Todd “My blanket. My blue blanket. Gimme my blue blanket!” Gene Wilder’s line from The Producers Gene Wilder died in August. He was eighty-three. Thinking about him…

Mr. Bosman

Twin Falls painting by Winkler and Nolan Tim Bosman, forty-seven, boyish and playful and a superb acting coach, has been the Drama teacher at Carlyle High in Rincon, Idaho, for…

Actual Abstract

Shall We Dance? painting by Todd “The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.” Iris Murdoch An announcement came in the mail, and by mail I…

Strangely Early

All That You Ask Of Me painting by Nolan Winkler “The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to…

Gym Rats

Oasis painting by Nolan Winkler Jim Young, coach of the Mendocino High School boys varsity basketball team, also happens to be my chiropractor and friend. I had a chiropractic appointment…

Hungry Deer

Birdbath & Friends charcoal and acrylic by Nolan Winkler “For when you see that the universe cannot be distinguished from how you act upon it, there is neither fate nor free…

Heart Bern

Moving Over Life painting by Nolan Winkler Dear Todd, Max here. I’m wondering how you feel about Bernie Sanders supporters at the Convention who just don’t want to let go…

More Menebroker

Paths painting by Nolan Winkler “We have never grown up from magic—just away.” Ann Menebroker I recently wrote a piece about my friend Ann Menebroker, the fine poet who died…

Ann Menebroker

Flora painting by Nolan WInkler “the two figures, male and female, are naked and gracefully huge. their raised right feet begin a dance that never continues.” Ann Menebroker I moved…

Kevin & Mumia

Moments That We Shape painting by Nolan Winkler  “On a hot day in the southern desert of Africa I wanted to speak to one of my favorite Bushmen. He was…

Brexit Musings

You Just Looked Up At the Stars painting by Nolan Winkler “Greece should go back to a national currency to have more autonomous decision-making with regards to it own economy,…

Change

before, during a photographic collaboration of Todd, Marcia, and Max “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers We…

Coup

I've Been Waiting For the Sun painting by Nolan Winkler “If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.” Oscar Wilde I think it…

Sad Scary

Quantum Something Or Other painting by Nolan Winkler  “Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?” Maurice Freehill Now that the…

Sherlock Gnomes

Little Gnome photo by Marcia Sloane  “I can never bring you to realize [Watson] the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from…

Your Bliss

From The Chair painting by Nolan Winkler “I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.” P.…

Voting For Bernie

I March in the Parade of Liberty painting by Nolan Winkler Today I filled out my absentee ballot and voted for Bernie Sanders to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for…

Hollywood Salads

Sunny Days painting by Nolan Winkler From 1978 until 1985 I was entangled in the movie business as a novelist and screenwriter hoping to get my creations made into movies. I was…

Louie & Women

When I Sit In The Dark painting by Nolan Winkler Some weeks ago I shared the opening chapter of my novel Inside Moves, and a number of readers wrote to…

Staunch Democrats

Sometimes, It's A Circus, Isn't It? painting by Nolan Winkler Most humans, alas, are easily swayed by clever liars who pray on our fears, and such swaying will almost surely…

Nuclear Giants

On A Salty Day painting by Nolan Winkler “Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water.” Albert Einstein Listening to the Giants bombard the Dodgers last week,…

Bernie Brigades

Calligraphic Bones painting by Nolan Winkler “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even…

Favorites

Sunstruck painting by Nolan Winkler “The diamond-bright dawn woke men and crows and bullocks together. Kim sat up and yawned, shook himself, and thrilled with delight. This was seeing the…

Forty Years Ago

Crossroads painting by Nolan winkler I completed my novel Inside Moves in 1975, the year the war in Vietnam ended. I had a medical deferment that saved me from going…

Bernie Blackout

Over the Rainbow painting by Nolan Winkler (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2016) “I think perfect objectivity is an unrealistic goal; fairness, however, is not.”…

Near and Far

I Promise Moderation painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2016) “There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over…

Two Stories from Buddha In A Teacup

Change What was her name? She modeled for him twice. The four paintings he made of her sold before the paint was dry. Something about her angularity—a hunger in her…

Town Life

There Is Always More Life painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2016) “Life is a long lesson in humility.” James Barrie I have…

What Stood Out

Remembering What Spring Can Bring painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2016) Todd. Max here, writing from snowy New Hampshire. At 7:30 this…

Jewish Like Bernie

  Clouds on I-5 photograph by Bill Fletcher (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2016) “The truth is not ashamed of appearing contrived.” Isaac Bashevis Singer Reveling…

Two Good Movies

Meeting the Muse (Diablo Ballet) © 2015 David Jouris/Motion Pictures (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2016) “You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.”…

Calliope of Hope

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2016) On Saturday February 20 at 6:30 PM, I will be at Gallery Books in Mendocino reading from the new Counterpoint…

Suffering Fools

We've Traded Places Times Before painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2016) “Life is a long lesson in humility.” James Barrie My friend…

Monsieur Russell

Todd and Mark circa 1961 photo courtesy of Mark Russell (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2016) My friend Mark Russell recently sent me a photograph taken…

Not Stupid

Todd and Hubbard photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2016) “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”…

Four Chairs

Four Chairs photograph by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2016) “All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.”…

Crazy Money

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2015) “The lack of money is the root of all evil.” Mark Twain Just got the annual news from Social Security…

Dogs & Cats

Molly & Dylan Sleeping photo by Bill Fletcher (This short story appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2015) An Inter-Species Holiday Fable Myra Eberhardt is a self-avowed cat person—the…

Seymour

The Piano Lesson photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2015) “If you play an instrument or sing, you will no doubt agree that…

Glimpsing the Future

Glimpsing the Future (Australian Ballet) © 2014 David Jouris Motion Pictures (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2015) “There is always one moment in childhood when the door…

Thanksgiving

Marcia's Best Ever Blue Hubbard Squash Pie (This story appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2015) Henry Abbot is not in the habit of picking up hitchhikers, though until…

Holiday Sales Extravaganza

   Dear Readers,   Here for your amusement and benefit, we hope, is my annual holiday announcement featuring astounding price reductions on books and CDs and things you and all…

Roads Not Taken

Trail To Garfield Peak (Crater Lake 2015) photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2015) “Your life is the fruit of your own doing.”…

Ego & Muse

Independent/Dependent (Lily Cai Dance Company) copyright 2015 David Jouris/Motion Pictures (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2015) “When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door,…

Old Books

When Words Become Irrelevant (Kevin O'Day Ballet) © 2013 David Jouris/Motion Pictures (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2015) I recently came upon an old book I inherited from…

Thought Control

Unity of Time/Place/Action photo montage by Ellen Jantzen (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2015) “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance…

Graphic Novels

The Search painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2015) “I’m a comic book artist. So I think to myself, what do I like…

The Magician

A still from The Magician, a video by Kate Greenstreet (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2015) “Magicians will always tell you the trick is the most…

Fin Again—Wake!

Todd At Crater Lake photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2015) “…that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends unquiring one well to the…

Of Onyx and Guinea Pigs

Crater Lake Chipmunk photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2015) “There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind—the humorous.” Mark…

Assignments

Grace Upon The Visit painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2015) “Tell the children the truth.” Bob Marley           Even at this late date…

Ganesha

Ganesha photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2015) “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the…

Refugees

Homage to the Kumulipo (Na Lei Hulu) © 2012 David Jouris / Motion Pictures (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2015) Number of people displaced internally in…

Giants & Dodgers

Giants Hardware photo by David Jouris (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2015) “The truth is not ashamed of appearing contrived.” Isaac Bashevis Singer In my dotage…

Ida Four

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2015) Two hours into tonight’s Open Mike at Club Muse, a dumpy old pub on San Pablo Avenue in Richmond California,…

Elgin

At the Point of Discovery (Zhukov Dance Theatre) © 2012 David Jouris / Motion Pictures (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2015) “A true friend is someone…

Reversions

Bird Mansion photo by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2015) “Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.” Mark Twain Something marvelous strange happened…

Django

Django On Todd photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2015) “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and…

Skid Marks

Escape photograph by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2015) Monday. July 27, 2015. I’m coming home from Fort Bragg, heading south on Highway One in…

Cover Stories

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2015) “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”…

Brutalizing Greece

Passion Play painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2015) “Greece should go back to a national currency to have more autonomous decision-making with…

Cherry Tree Myth

But She Had Wings painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2015) “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth…

Bubbles & Blobs

Three Skips To Each Stone painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2015) “In the San Joaquin Valley, pumping now exceeds natural replenishment by…

We’re In It

We're In It  ⓒ Copyright David Jouris (Presidio Dance Theatre) (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2015) “So make sure when you say you’re in it but not of…

Trust

Question & Reply painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2015) “You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.” Anton Chekhov…

Just Old

If My Heads Sinks Beneath The Sea painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2015) “Youth is not a time of life; it is…

Late Spring

36 & COUNTING painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2015) “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” Hal Borland Nature brought us…

LA Jewish Money

My Grandmother Goody with Red Skelton and William Bendix (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2015) “The argument that all Jews have a heartfelt investment in the…

Lost To Time

Compound drawing by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2015) “Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons,…

Worth

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2015) “There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Stephen Stills I have my piano tuned once a year.…

Stripes

This Song's For You by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2015) “The truth you believe in and cling to makes you unavailable to hear…

Ant Cows

Todd and Pup photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2015) “Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They…

All At Once

Spring Display photo by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2015) “Love exists in itself, not relying on owning or being owned.” Sharon Salzberg Last year,…

Afraid Of Silence

Dahlia photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2015) “Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day…

Play Ball

  (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2015) “When they start the game, they don’t yell, ‘Work ball.’ They say, ‘Play ball.’” Willie Stargell The day before…

Water

Flow photo by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2015) “No water, no life. No blue, no green.” Sylvia Earle As I was getting off his…

Completion

Kindling Pile photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2015) “It is only in literature that coincidences seem unnatural.” Robert Lynd Several years ago…

Hey Nineteen

Todd 1969 photo by Richard Mead (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2015) Hey Nineteen, that’s ‘Retha Franklin She don’t remember Queen of Soul Walter Becker and…

Goody’s Song

Goody photo by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2015) “The truth is not ashamed of appearing contrived.” Isaac Bashevis Singer As recently reported, Marcia and…

Meeting Spock

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2015) “My folks came to the U.S. as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston, a citizen, went…

Tons of Books

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2015) “Life is a long lesson in humility.” James Barrie When I was a kid we used the word tons to…

Palmer Alaska

(This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2015) “I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct…

Outage

Todd and Django In the Dark photo by Marcia Sloane (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2015) “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.” Robert Heinlein The…

Mowing

Mowed Down photo by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2015) “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” Henry David Thoreau A friend called last…

Reboot

(This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2015) “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” Herman Melville Female-led Ghostbusters reboot gets summer…

Of Cats and Food

Django Yoga photo by Marcia Sloane (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2015) “The story of cats is a story of meat, and begins with the end…

Trillions

in the field of gold by Ellen Jantzen (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2015) “All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant…

Satire

Homage to Kokopelli photograph by David Jouris (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2015) “Satire has to be done en clair. You can’t blunt the edge…

New Year’s Intentions

Fruit Tart Mandala photo by Bill Fletcher (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2015) “I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need…

See’s

(This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2014) “All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” Charles M. Schulz Marcia and…

East of Eden

(This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2014) “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden We…

Choosing Names

Mementos by Nolan Winkler (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2014) “I only like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign.” Mae West Our dear friends…

Multiple Thanks

Flower pen and ink by Todd (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2014) “All the successful parents I have observed seem to possess one common quality:…

Holiday Shopping Reminder

Dear Reader, I promise this will be my last holiday shopping reminder for 2014. A graduate of the self-taught course How To Sell Excellent Esoteric Original Literature and Music All…

Power Over

No Illusions. No Replays. painting by Nolan Winkler (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2014) “Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is…

Nonsense

Mr. and Mrs. Magician and their son Mischief painting by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2014) “Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps…

Stockholm Syndrome

Merlin pen and ink by Todd (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2014) “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the…

Geese

Hawk pen and ink by Todd (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2014) “Bird flying high, you know how I feel.” Anthony Newley Every day this…

American Exceptionalism

A Shakespearean Map of the U.S.A. courtesy of David Jouris (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2014) “There are no exceptions to the rule that everybody…

Last Beans

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2014) Step out onto the Planet. Draw a circle a hundred feet round.  Inside the circle are 300 things nobody understands,…

Ida’s Place Book Two—Revival

(This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2014) “Every existence in nature, every existence in the human world, every cultural work that we create, is something which…

Waiting For Disaster

(This article appeared in the drought October 2014) “There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.” Henry Kissinger As the drought continues and a weakening El…

What Shall We Do?

The Wild Gardener painting by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2014) “Life is full of obstacle illusions.” Grant Frazier Congress has just voted to cut…

National Pentagon Radio

News Report pen and ink by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2014) “He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to…

Bochy Dreams

(This short story appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2014) Bruce Bochy, a pleasant slow moving man, is the longtime manager of the San Francisco Giants. A former catcher…

Curve Again

(This short story appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2014) Madison Bumgarner, the Giants’ formidable leftie known as Mad Bum or simply Bum, stands tall atop the mound on…

Stealing

(This short story appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2014) Angel Pagan, the switch-hitting leadoff batter for the Giants, one of the swiftest outfielders in the game, takes a…

August Fable

Water Lilies by Max Greenstreet When I was in my early thirties, I lived on a monthly disability check from the state: two hundred and sixty-eight dollars. My rent for a…

Failure

Redemption Song painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2014) “Genius is the ability to renew one’s emotions in daily experience.” Paul Cezanne Last…

Heaven and Hell

Little Sparrow Nolan Winkler (This short story from Buddha In A Teacup appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2014) On their way to a matinee of the San Francisco Ballet,…

Food Prices

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2014) “U.S. food prices are on the rise, raising a sensitive question: When the cost of a hamburger patty soars, does…

Perceptions of Wealth

Roses Pancakes Coffee photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2014) “I got plenty of nothing, and nothing’s plenty for me.” DuBose Heyward and…

Watching and Listening

beats thinking ©John Grimes fizzdom.com grimescartoons.com (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2014) “If it weren’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight.” George Gobel…

Iraq

dreaming in the grey light painting by nolan winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2014) “One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect…

Takeover Complete

Triangle Eye drawing by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2014) “In individuals, insanity is rare: but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the…

Walton Predicts

Walton Predicts graphic by David Jouris (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2014) “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” Niels Bohr My friend David Jouris,…

Traveling

Shoe Tie photo by David Jouris (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2014) “The only alternative to co-existence is co-destruction.” Jawaharlal Nehru We were down on Big…

Trailers

Trailer photo by David Jouris (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2014) One of my hobbies in these days of societal collapse—most of us in denial about…

Community Property

Long Way From Home Nolan Winkler acrylic and crayon on paper (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2014) “Ah, yes, divorce…from the Latin word meaning to rip out…

Taste

Thurber Django photo by David Jouris (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2014) “My psychiatrist told me I was crazy, and I said I want a…

Tribe Of Giants

Giants Jacket photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2014) “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell…

Curse Lifted

Eggs In Hands photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2014) “You didn’t have a choice about the parents you inherited, but you do…

Underlying Problem

Globular Warming photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2014) “It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept.” Bill Watterson I…

Finishing Things

Bound By Certain Forces oil on canvas by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2014) “The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only…

Off The Map

Green Chair oil on canvas by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2014) “We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy…

Ida’s Place—Book One

Ida's Place cover drawing by Todd (This article and these first two chapters of Ida's Place—Book One: Return appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2014) About a year ago…

The New Yorker

 Redwood Rounds photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2014) “Sometimes with The New Yorker, they have grammar rules that just don’t feel right…

How Much Do You Love Him?

Django on Marcia's Lap (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2014) “The story of cats is the story of meat, and begins with the end of the…

Ida’s Place

(Ida's Place Cover drawing by Todd) Dear Friends and Readers of My Blog, It is my great pleasure to announce the birth of my new novel Ida’s Place—Book One: Return, the…

Shakespeare

 ©  1998 David Jouris/Hold the Mustard (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2014) “I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he…

Self-Loving

When Your Heart Is Strong drawing by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2014) “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” David Packard…

Sad People

The house with no windows painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2014) “In the silence of night I have often wished for just…

Pomp & Circumstance

  Sextant drawing by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2014) “Everything in life matters and ultimately has a place, an impact and a meaning.” Laurens…

Chosen

Mendocino Coast photo by Bill Fletcher (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2014) “The best is the enemy of good.” Voltaire You have probably heard the provocative…

The Source

  Snail Mail photo by Yogini Lena (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2014) “The fishermen know the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they…

Funny

Incongroovity painting by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2014) “While thou livest, keep a good tongue in thy head.” William Shakespeare We were having supper with…

Crisis & Opportunity

Sally Holding Molly photo by Bill Fletcher (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2014) “When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters.…

Drought

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2014) “Rigid beliefs make disappointments seem unbearable, whereas realistic beliefs help us to accept disappointment and go on from there.” Eileen…

Father Christmas

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2013) “It is a wise father that knows his own child.” William Shakespeare My father was extremely neurotic. A psychiatrist by…

The Amazon Paradox

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2013) “Surrealism to me is reality.” John Lennon My books are for sale on Amazon. New and used. So are my…

Being Gotten

Cat and Jamming photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2013) You remember, I’m sure, that time you went to a party with no…

Celebrity Saviors

Mr. Magician painting by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2013) “Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin of the influential Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in…

Shameless Self-Promotion

Wild Gardener Black painting by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2013) “And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is:…

Aht & Cultcha

Mr. and Mrs. Magician and Their Son Mischief painting by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2013) “A triptych (three related paintings) by the artist Francis Bacon…

Slaves of Fruit

Cooking Down the Apples photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2013) “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces,…

Threes

In the Realms of Gold (Smuin Ballet © 2012 David Jouris/Motion Pictures) (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2013) “If you’re a basketball player, you’ve got to shoot.”…

A Person Here, A Person There

Blessed Brew  acrylic and crayon by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2013) I keep forgetting and remembering and forgetting and remembering how things work…

Loyalty

Molly photo by Bill Fletcher (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2013) My brother, a software systems analyst and project manager, sent me the following quote from…

The Machine Stops

  The Roar of Time pen and ink by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2013) “In this world there are only two ways of getting…

Aggression Versus Intelligence

    Mr. Magician painting by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2013) “The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man and constitutes…

Trish

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2013) Friends of ours recently told us that their twenty-five-year-old son, a bright personable college graduate, but no techie, found the…

Taylor Stoehr

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2013) “In life, one must show character and kindness.” Pablo Casals My good buddy Taylor Stoehr just died and I’ve been…

Life & Death

Autumn Rose photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2013) “All men’s misfortune, and the appalling disasters of history, the blunders of statesmen and…

Nationalism

Watermelon Dreams On A Starry Starry Night by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2013) “He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That…

The Way Of Things

Remaining A Mystery photograph by Ellen Jantzen (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2013) “You are the music while the music lasts.” T.S. Eliot My brother sent…

Blackberries & Firewood

Promise of Spring photograph by Ellen Jantzen (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2013) “Looks can be deceiving—it’s eating that’s believing.” James Thurber A few days ago,…

Still Moving

Todd self-portrait (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2013) “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” Mark Twain If…

Idiots

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2013) “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” Mark Twain I…

Obesity & Love

Autumn by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2013) “Your life is the fruit of your own doing.” Joseph Campbell Sitting on the sun-drenched beach…

Earth Of Foxes

Fox Kit photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2013) “‘Men have forgotten this truth,’ said the fox. ‘But you must not forget it.…

Choices

Marcia Practicing photo by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2013) “There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic Oracle… ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Nothing too much’—and…

Tapestry

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2013) “In individuals, insanity is rare: but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” Friedrich Nietzsche My brother…

Interdependence Day

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2013) A very large though not especially tall man is blocking the open doorway of Mendocino’s recently enlarged GoodLife Café and…

Dancing With Destiny

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2013) “Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself.” Alexander McCall Smith Do we, indeed, bring things…

Nothing

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2013) “Your life is the fruit of your own doing.” Joseph Campbell One of my favorite stories from Joseph Campbell is…

Ling Ch’i Ching

Glorious Auspiciousness photo by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2013) “Marvelous things approach the gate door.” Ling Ch’i Ching One of my great pleasures is…

Into the Mystic

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2013) “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the…

Worlds Collide

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2013) “There are only two emotions in Wall Street: fear and greed.” William Le Fevre In search of good chicken for…

Mean Spirits

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2013) “Unless you become more watchful in your states and check the spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you…

War On Global Warming

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2013) “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches,…

Roots & Eggs

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2013) “Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet.” Will Holt Lemon trees growing near…

How Stupid?

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2013) “Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.” William Stafford A recent phone conversation with a…

$1.50

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2013) “Once, during prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.”…

Blame

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2013) “Blaming speculators as a response to financial crisis goes back at least to the Greeks. It’s…

Tenuous Grip

Desert Dance by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2013) “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help…

What Really Happened?

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2013) “There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and—the third I can’t remember.” Italo Svevo The very first course…

Sane Man Walking

When Your Heart Is Strong painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2013) “ Solvitur ambulando, St. Jerome was fond of saying.  To solve…

Uncle David

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2013) My uncle David Walton died in China on March 8 at the ripe old age of eighty-seven, just a week…

Route 66

(Philanthropist painting by Nolan Winkler) “If you ever plan to motor west, Travel my way, take the highway that is best. Get your kicks on route sixty-six.” Bob Troup As I…

Greed Redux

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2013) “It has always seemed strange to me…the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are…

Homeless Forum

Photo by Kate Greenstreet (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2013) Unable to attend the forum on the homeless that was held in Mendocino near the end…

Muse Rides Again

Max Greenstreet in Ireland (self-portrait) (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2013) “I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but…

Pass the Ball, Kobe

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2013) “Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization…

My Big Trip, Part Three

Le Moulin de la Gallete by Pablo Picasso (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2013) “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely…

My Big Trip, Part Two

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2013) “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” Tim Cahill Staying with friends was the only way I…

My Big Trip, Part One

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2013) “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan but also believe.” Anatole France…

Four Hundred Thousand

I Never Heard The Warning (mixed media on wood) by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2013) “I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need,…

Unpublished Work

Multiple Moons painting by Nolan Winkler (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2013) “If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written…

E-Book Press Release

Rewriting Kerouac

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2013) “Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” Jack Kerouac More than…

Why Bother?

(This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2012) “Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very…

The Gift of the Old Guy

(This short story appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2012) 1 Ray, a slender man of eighty-two, his white hair sparse, gazes out the bus window at the passing…

Receiving

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2012) “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Jesus, Acts 20:35 John Steinbeck’s preface to his wonderful The Log…

Fiscal Cliffs

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2012) “Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.” Bo Derek So…immediately following and ever since…

Paradigms Shifting

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2012) “I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us…

What’s New?

Hungry For Color note card by Todd Walton (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2012) “Life is full of obstacle illusions.” Grant Frazier A recent San Francisco…

Nature Bats Last

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2012) “Deer have been around for five million years and must know what they’re doing.” Elizabeth Marshall Thomas Our new home…

Holiday Shopping Reminder

Dear Friends, December approaches! We have much good news to go along with our annual reminder: Don’t Forget UnderTheTableBooks.com when shopping for holiday gifts for friends and loved ones—home to…

Precious Dream

Marcia and Stella at the Mendocino Coast Hospital (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2012) Last night I had a precious dream, dreamt I woke into the…

Yard Sale

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2012) We just had a big yard sale to move along the myriad things we did not wish to keep in…

Zero Population Growth

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2012) “The chief cause for the impending collapse of the world—the cause sufficient in and by itself—is the enormous growth of…

Inventing Ourselves

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2012) “You don’t have to suffer to be a poet.  Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.” John Ciardi My last few…

City-States

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2012) My brother, a successful Internet Technology person living in San Mateo, recently wrote, “I know the Bay Area is back…

Walking To Town

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2012) “Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.” Steven Wright Last night by the fire, our new (old) house…

Connections

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2012) “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The…

Moving Experiences

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2012) Marcia and I are moving from the house we’ve rented for the past seven years into a house (five miles…

Going (a short story)

(This story was published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2012) “We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World.”…

Cheating Heart

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2012) “It’s like deja-vu all over again.” Yogi Berra My recent essay Cheating elicited several responses from readers wishing to share…

Cheating

    (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2012) “I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of…

Helen Gurley Brown

Photo of 1978 Cosmopolitan by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2012) “How could any woman not be a feminist? The girl I’m editing for wants…

Civil War

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2012) “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any…

Goff & Krishnamurti

  Mr. Magician, mixed media, by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2012, and was inspired by a remembrance of Krishnamurti written by William Edelen and…

Jehovah’s Witness

Mixed media, Shall We Dance, by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2012) A friend recently wrote to me about his philosophical discussions with a Jehovah’s…

Cautionary Tales

Photo of Molly by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2012) “My stories run up and bite me on the leg, and I respond by…

Humility

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2012) “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end…

Salt and Song

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2012) “Things filled men with fear: the more things they had, the more they had to fear. Things had a way…

Apes

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2012) “Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him…

Giants and Greece

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2012) “We don’t have to look far to see how pervasive suffering is in the world.” Joseph Goldstein Matt Cain recently…

Bird In Hand

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2012) “For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.”…

Homelessness

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2012) I am currently in the throes of rewriting a novel I first completed in 2003, rewrote entirely in 2006, and…

No Honeybees

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2012) “The busy bee has no time for sorrow.” William Blake I am not a master gardener. I’ve been growing vegetables…

Children

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2012) “I would suspect that the hardest thing for you to accept is your own beauty. Your own worth. Your own…

Austerity

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2012) “When we deeply understand that actions bring results, it can motivate us to take active responsibility for our actions and…

Everything Connected

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2012) “When we express our true nature, we are human beings. When we do not, we do not know what we…

Laughing

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2012) “Humor is just another defense against the universe.” Mel Brooks Once upon a time, so many years ago it might…

Sources of Wonder

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2012) “Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature…

My Father

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2012) When my father died five years ago, my siblings and I did not hold a memorial service in his honor.…

Big Data

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2012) “Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.” Albert Einstein A wintry April day—rain,…

He Touched Me

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2012) “If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.” Pearl S. Buck Reading Bruce McEwen’s tragic Hug…

Stuff

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2012) “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” Henry David Thoreau…

Balance: a short story

photo by Marcia Sloane (This story appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2012) I was the only child of elderly parents. They both died the year before I evolved…

The Manure Chronicles, Part Two

  (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2012) “Pleasure is spread through the earth in stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.” William Wordsworth Long…

The Manure Chronicles, Part One

  Rabbit Manure Garlic Mulch photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2012) “You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before…

Signs Of Spring

Starry Starry Mona painting by Ben Davis Jr. (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2012) “I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other…

Better Be Good

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2012) “In Hollywood they place you under contract instead of under observation.” Walter Winchell I recently read a brief rave review…

Greek To Me

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2012) “The church is the great lost and found department.” Robert Short The terrace at the Presbyterian…

Shooting Hoops

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2012) “She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks.” Sherman Alexie I suppose it’s a good thing…

Junior High

Wolf Me drawing by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2012) “Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had…

Practice(ing)

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2012) “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” Sylvia Plath Marcia and I were walking on Big River Beach yesterday, the…

Going Postal

Saroyan Envelope by Jenifer Angel (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2012) “I claim there ain’t
 Another Saint
 As great as Valentine.” Ogden Nash The notices currently…

Crazy Memory

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2012) “Every man’s memory is his private literature.” Aldous Huxley I used to know a loquacious drunk who punctuated his pontifications with…

Close Calls

Hawk pen and ink drawing by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2012) “Fate laughs at probabilities.”  E.G. Bulwer-Lytton For me to be born, my parents had…

Mystery Inventions

Mr. and Mrs. Magician and Daughter Mystery painting by Todd (This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser January 2012) Deeply moved by a concert of music by Martinû…

Creative Paradox

Photo by Garth Hagerman (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2011) “To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.” Nadia…

Occupy Christmas

(This story first appeared in the Sacramento News & Review December 2011.) Two mornings before Christmas on a brilliantly sunny day in Sacramento, Max wakes to his phone ringing and…

Zorba & Kurt & Hermann

The painting Mr. Magician by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2011) “As you walk, you cut open and create that riverbed into which the stream of…

Yes, But…

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2011) “If there's not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.”…

When Is It Done?

(This piece appeared—twice!—in the Anderson Valley Advertiser in 2008-2009. I recently got a request for this article, thought it was on my blog, but could not find it herein. So…

Falling Behind

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2011) “If we weren’t still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy…

Complexity

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2011) “Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s…

Robbery

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article was written for the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2011) Someone broke into our car last week while we were in Cotton Auditorium for another…

3-D

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2011) As the local and state and national and global economies continue to stagger under the weight…

Occupy Yourself

Photo of Todd by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2011) “The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same…

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Recent Studies Show

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2011) “As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants…

Whoopsie Doopsie

Drawing by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2011) “The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never…

Protesting 101

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2011) “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who…

What Lasts?

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2011) “You are the music while the music lasts.” T.S. Eliot Long ago, in a time when records were big round…

Sexual Comportment

Shall We Dance painting by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2011) “There’s only one person in the whole world like you, and that’s you yourself.”…

Wrong Thinking

Mr. Magician painting by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2011) “Taken out of context I must seem so strange.” Ani DiFranco One of my Anthropology…

Good People

Mr. and Mrs. Magician and their son Mischief by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser September 2011) “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad,…

Collapse Scenarios

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2011) “Our business gets better as the economy gets worse.” Kent Moyer, founder and CEO of World…

Flow

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2011) “Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting what you are doing.…

Rich People

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2011) “ Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.” John…

Brandon Crawford

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2011) “The Possible’s slow fuse is lit By the Imagination.” Emily Dickinson While following a seemingly insignificant line of thought…

Three Musketeers

Photo by Marcia Sloane (First published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2011) “Oh, the women, the women!” cried the old soldier. “I know them by their romantic imagination. Everything…

Aliens From Outer Space

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2011) “Chances are, when we meet intelligent life forms in outer space, they're going to be descended…

Another Year

(photo of Mike Leigh) “The backers accept that they don't know what they are going to get.” Mike Leigh According to the on-screen credits that introduce Mike Leigh’s latest movie…

Lives Unlived

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2011) “Every art has its secrets, and the secrets of distilling are being lost the way the old songs were lost.…

Thus Spake Angelina

(This essay first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2011) “Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.”  Montaigne I used to hate it when…

Her Children

Photo by Ginger Malisos (This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2011) “My mother is a poem 
I'll never be able to write, 
though everything I write…

He Is Us

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2011) “When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion…

Something Missing

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2011) The following essay is about interpersonal relationships, though the opening paragraphs may seem to be about disaster, ignorance, greed,…

What We Do

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2011) “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.” Bertrand…

Both At Once

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2011) “Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton Morning: A beautiful day in Mendocino, the…

Ball Bear Cat Piano

Photo by Marcia Sloane (This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2011) “A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.” Humphrey Bogart Jon…

Duck!

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2011) “One cannot write of ducks without mentioning water.”  Ernest Thompson Seton Just when we thought the apex of human…

Post Office Football

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2011) “Carrier of news and knowledge, Instrument of trade and industry, Promoter of mutual acquaintance, Of peace and good-will Among…

Extortion, Anyone?

(This tidbit appeared originally in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2011) So I opened this month’s PG&E bill and out fell a little piece of paper with the news that…

Old Pot Folks

(This story first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2011) “How’s your back?” asks Marvin, handing me cash for pruning his fruit trees. “Pretty good,” I say, lifting my…

What’s Going On?

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2011) “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” Malcolm…

Young Pot Moms

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2011) “Youth is wasted on the young.” George Bernard Shaw When I and my middle-aged and elderly Mendocino Elk Albion…

Kings and Presidents

(This essay first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2011) “Divine right of kings means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost.” Herbert Spencer I just finished…

The Play’s The Thing

(This essay first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2011) “More relative than this—the play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.” William Shakespeare Yes, it…

Kyoto Amore

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2011) “But a whole school of lady koto players Best kimono and Japanese hairdo Perform on tatami platform underneath falling…

Cliff’s Bowl

(This piece first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2011) Cliff Glover recently gave us one of his bowls. Cliff is an excellent potter and a superb cook. Tall,…

Myth & History

(This essay originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2011) “As the heavens are high and the earth is deep, so the hearts of kings are unsearchable.” Book of Proverbs…

Poets and Artists

(This article appeared originally in the Anderson Valley Advertiser, March 2011) “The poet’s only responsibility is to write fresh lines.” Charles Olson With all due respect to the organization known…

Your Inner Bushman

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2011) “The five groups of San or Bushmen are called the First People. Most call themselves Bushmen when referring to…

My Butt: the musical

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2011) “If a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, then God…

Dead Airplane Kerouac Caen

(This article originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2011) “The past is never dead, it is not even past.” William Faulkner When my wife and I joined forces four…

Creeping Up On God

(This essay first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 2011) So this guy goes to see a psychiatrist and after fifty minutes the psychiatrist says, “I think you’re crazy.”…

Whales & Predictions

“The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” Allan K. Chalmers Sunday. The second of January 2011. My wife Marcia and…

All Or Nothing

“Every day: meditation, chocolate, a glass of port wine, and flirting with young men.” Beatrice Wood at age 98 on her secret to longevity “I’m never drinking coffee again,” said…

Scholar Jim

“There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind—the humorous.” Mark Twain I wonder how Mark Twain would feel if he knew his novel Huckleberry Finn has been…

Propaganda of Childhood

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2010) “What we remember from childhood we remember forever—permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.” Cynthia Ozick The propaganda of my…

After Rain

(This short story appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser Christmas 2010. I am grateful to Bruce Anderson and Mark Scaramella for giving me the space to share my fiction and…

Slow Going

(First published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser December 2010) “For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.” Lily Tomlin Five years ago, a few weeks before I made my move from Berkeley…

Happiness

“If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.” Edith Wharton November thirtieth. The weather report said Mendocino could expect rain tonight and for…

Changing Seasons

(Every year for the past four years I have been commissioned by Bay Woof, a Bay Area Dog magazine, to write a Christmas story for them, a short short story…

My Black Heroes

“A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.” Bob Dylan The black athlete I am currently most enamored of is Michael Vick, the quarterback for…

Attention Deficit Nonsense

“Tell the children the truth.” Bob Marley 1957. Las Lomitas Elementary School. Menlo Park, California “I invite those people with ants in their pants,” proclaimed Mrs. Davenport, my third grade…

The Dreidel in Rudolph’s Manger

(I first published this story several years ago in the Sacramento News & Review and it eventually ran in dozens of free weeklies and even in a few daily newspapers.…

Critical Delusion

“The fraudulent practices that got people into homes they couldn’t afford are at the heart of our problem.” Robert Scheer There is no doubt I am happier and more productive…

Le Village

“I always felt that the great high privilege, relief, and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.” Katherine Mansfield A soggy afternoon, the last Friday in October…

Sport

(This article originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2010) “If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of…

Disappointment

Whilst discussing my hopes and expectations for the San Francisco Giants with Mark Scaramella, he suggested I try my hand at writing about disappointment. I just hope my attempt doesn’t…

Gay

“A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.” Raymond Chandler Before the advent of the interweb, I frequented libraries and secondhand bookstores in search of good short…

Prostitution

“Working in Hollywood does give one a certain expertise in the field of prostitution.” Jane Fonda I have never heard of a workshop for writers that teaches the efficacious use…

Desnatchification

“Bodies devoid of mind are as statues in the market place.” Euripides Have you ever seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers? I’m thinking particularly of the 1978 remake starring Donald…

Meaning of Meaning

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” Ludwig Wittgenstein I first encountered the writing of Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1967 when I was eighteen, a…

Magical Thinking

“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.” Tom Robbins Big game tonight, our Giants scrapping for first place in the National League West,…

Walton’s Favorite Films

(not including all the Marx Brothers movies, a Buster Keaton or two, a few Capra films, The Maltese Falcon and several other great oldies, and a few inexplicably appealing teen…

Art Rant

Books “Rae’s eyes were red and swollen. They sat on the couch side by side, in silence, waiting for the doctor.” from Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott The silence…

Poor People

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Anne Frank On my way out to water the garden, the living room…

Men In Dresses

If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; If I be in it, I pray God keep me so. Jean D’Arc Various…

Revenooers

“What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.” Thomas Paine A mile inland from Highway One, the Comptche-Ukiah Road becomes a two-mile straightaway traversing rolling hills of…

Psychic Leeches

“The truth is not ashamed of appearing contrived.” Isaac Bashevis Singer The other night I caught the last twenty minutes of a spiritual talk show. My initial positive reaction to…

Getting Well

“Programming our intelligence with illusion and fantasy of there’s something wrong with us and enough isn’t enough and too much isn’t too much then turning us loose on ourselves and…

What’s In A Name?

(This essay was written for The Anderson Valley Advertiser August 2010) “Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith.” Oliver Wendell Holmes As I answer the ringing phone, I…

Social Security

(This article originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2010) “The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed…

Culture of Narcissism

(This essay originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 2010) “Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure.” Christopher…

Tenaya’s Kale Infinitum

Today I completed a process that has taken a year from start to finish. Last year our friend Tenaya gave us (Marcia and Todd) a single baby kale plant. I…

The Double (Illustrated)

(Dave Smith posted an illustrated version of The Double on his marvelous Ukiah Blog Live, and I liked his version so well I decided to replicate it here. However, I…

Genuine Praise

(This piece originally appeared in The Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2010) “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner…

Ergo Ego

(This piece originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 2010) One of my favorite stories about my ego takes place on my fortieth birthday, October 17, 1989. I am…

Writing Good

(This article originally appeared in The Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 2010) I daresay creativity cannot be taught. Creativity can be engendered, encouraged, cultivated, and supported, but being creative is as…

Solar School

(This piece originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2010) Mendocino has a spanking new elementary/junior high school on Little Lake Road about a mile inland from the village,…

The Presence of Absence

(This piece originally appeared in the AVA June 2010) Thursday in the village of Mendocino is the day the AVA (Anderson Valley Advertiser) arrives in our post office boxes and…

Words, Words, Words

(This essay originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2010) We are awash in words. Our thoughts are words. We talk with words, we read words, we listen to…

Woody Polanski

(This essay originally appeared in The Anderson Valley Advertiser) For most of my life it has been my habit (one might even call it a duty) to write letters to…

Q

Our dear friend Quinton Duval died last week at the age of sixty-one, and the world lost a most generous soul and a marvelous poet. Q, as we called him,…

My Bad

(This article originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2010) I first heard the expression My Bad used on a basketball court circa 1975. The expression most likely came…

Big River Spring (2010)

(This essay first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2010) The copious rains of 2010 made Big River the big muddy for much of the winter, the beach in…

Carma

(This article originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser: April 2010) Yesterday a tree fell on our car. Fortunately no one was in the car when the wind snapped the…

Transformation

(This memoir first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2010: photo by Marcia Sloane) I have read a great deal about dreams and dreaming, and whether you believe dreams…

Money Ball (Love)

Something marvelously strange is going on with my San Francisco Giants. For the first time since the decline and fall of Barry Bonds, the dead wood has been greatly minimized,…

Enough Already

(This essay appeared originally in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2010) Many of us traveling into late middle age have by now laid our parents to rest and/or moved them…

Pathlogical Greed & Electric

Repeat after me. Pacific Gas and Electric is not a public utility. They would like us to think they are a public utility, but they are not. PG&E is a…

Travels With Frisbee

Fredrick Morrison, the inventor of the Frisbee, died at the age of ninety on February 11, 2010. I still carry a Frisbee in my knapsack as I have since 1965…

Tiger Bunnies

On this rainy December day, we cannot resist tying together the feeding frenzy on the carcass of the icon known as Tiger Woods, the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, the…

The Toilets of Mendocino

I was going to title this piece Pay To Poop or The Pooplic Option or something else related to the maddening absurdities of the current healthcare debate and the ongoing…

The Devolution of Basketball

John Wooden, the legendary coach of the UCLA basketball team just turned ninety-nine. Wooden coached the UCLA team from 1948 to 1975 and won ten National Championships in a span…

Competitive Meditation

What a silly idea, competitive meditation. Yet in America all things become competitive and hierarchical as reflections of the dominant operating system. Twenty years ago the notion of competitive yoga…

Three Presidents (and a First Lady)

For most of my sixty years on the planet I have been a social recluse. Yet through no conscious intention on my part, I have come face-to-face with three presidents…

Of Trees and Money

This is about firewood, water, the San Francisco Giants, and Single Payer Healthcare, among other things. Marcia and I rent a house on Comptche Road, our backyard abutting a vast…

The Death of Literature

It has come to my attention on several occasions of late that the history of the decline and fall of American literature to its current moribund state is as little…

Restoration and Redemption

Before During After With Under the Table Books

Bums At A Grave

The first movie I remember seeing at a movie theatre was The Court Jester starring Danny Kaye, Basil Rathbone, and the very young Angela Lansbury. 1955. I was six years…

Writing the Sequel to Under the Table Books

I’ve been madly writing the sequel to my just-published novel Under the Table Books. Given that only a handful of people have read Under the Table Books, and confronted by…

Under the Table Books

The Awesome Potential of Word-Of-Mouth I have just published my magnum opus Under the Table Books. Were I a member of the cultural elite of this or any other nation,…

Think

(This piece was originally published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser under the title "John Trudell and Me") John Trudell made an appearance at the Caspar Community Center a few weeks…

Going After Nathan (a short story)

            My mother tells people I’m in the insurance business, which is certainly true, though not in the way most people think of insurance. The one time I was arrested…

Outer World

  Marcia and I just returned from three weeks in the outer world. We gave nine house concerts, two bookstore performances, and visited a couple dozen bookstores from Mendocino all…

Mendocino the Great

  Yes, arguments can be made that Mendocino is an over-priced tourist destination/trap, but having lived here for three and a half years now, I would like to give you…

Exact Equality Redux

Exact Equality Redux I first wrote this essay a few months before the election of Obama. I posted it on my blog and had several responses, some angry, some supportive,…

Thieves

The only difference between samsara and enlightenment is attachment. Thinley Norbu   My friend Iris hails me at the Mendocino post office and says, “You know how my car got…

Old Friends: A Winter Tale

Old Friends by Todd Walton    1             Michael Perry, gruff and unkempt, smiles at his four-year-old daughter Cecily and says, “Please be my little songbird just a few more…

The Resurrection of Inside Moves

(First published in The Anderson Valley Advertiser, thanks to Bruce Anderson) I wrote the novel that would become Inside Moves in 1975, just as the United States was finally pulling…

Of Water and Melons a harvest tale

Author's Note: I wrote Of Water and Melons thirty years ago. I usually rewrite my stories dozens of times, let them sit for a month or a year, and then…

The Gravity of Should

I dropped out of college thirty-eight years ago at the age of nineteen. 1969. My fear of being drafted and sent to Vietnam was erased overnight by a blessed medical…

The Double

                       I still find it hard to fathom that there are men walking the earth who resemble me so exactly that even…

Playing for Capra

The following memory was first published in The Anderson Valley Advertiser. Many Thanks to Bruce Anderson for his continuing support of my writing.     Playing For Capra Marcia and…