thoughts on life

We’re hearing the word ‘breakthrough’ a lot lately. It’s starting to sound like one of those words that has no meaning, like ‘compassion.’

I have a good friend in the Azores who lived in California for 18 years. He’s been back on his home island in the mid-Atlantic for 20 years, but retains…

How did humankind come to this pass? Not just evolutionarily, which is a fairly straightforward process in a random kind of way. But rather as the separating and separate, fragmenting…

If I had any doubt that woolly-headed Democrats are just as responsible as heartless Republicans for America electing this cretinous president, it was removed by a young 40-year-old man from…

Acrid smoke wafts in over the parkland from an unknown fire. Upstream, a dog standing in the water barks loudly for fifteen minutes, goaded by its owner. Despite these things…

Donald Trump is about to meet his new bosom frenemy, Kim Jong-un. This is what it looks like when crazy-dark meets crazy-dark. The world holds its breath, and ‘wishes them…

This column began about 25 years ago when I moved to this sylvan northern California agriculture/college town. But I didn’t become a writer until a reader got word to me…

I’m neither Christian nor Buddhist, but while recovering from food poisoning that had brought me within two days of death, I met an old Chinese woman that seemed to commune…