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Is Critical Mass reaching Critical Mass?
When I was a kid growing up in Napa California during the 1950's, I had a paper route for four years, starting when I was 10. My route covered 12 suburban blocks, in the hills of Alta Heights, and...
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O'Hara and the "Open Poetry" Debate
Frank O'Hara was, by all accounts, a very social person. With a wide circle of friends, some intimate, many familiar. As an active member of the New York art and literary scenes, he met or came into...
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China's One Child Policy Relaxed
As readers of this blog know, I consider population growth the major problem in the world today, so the announcement by China of a relaxation of its official one child per family policy is...
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The Updated Gimlet
Here's a small departure from tradition in the form of an augmented Gimlet. The Gimlet, according to a 1953 Raymond Chandler novel The Long Goodbye, is half gin and half Rose's lime juice. And what...
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My Letter to the Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle published this date...
Traditional San Francisco Victorian Row-HousesWe hear a great deal these days about the need for more "affordable" housing in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. Supposedly, increased high density...
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The Still Point of the Turning World
As I was looking at the clock on the wall of my office this week a thought occurred to me.I was never a whiz at math, so most of my meditations in the area of physics tend towards the metaphysical,...
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A Warm Rain from Louisiana
If you've ever been in Louisiana during a hot, humid tropical rainstorm, you know something of the richness and sticky sensuality of the deep south. The sweetness comes from the fruit, which thrives in...
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On a Painting by Rotari
A Young Woman in a Russian Hat Holding a Book by Pietro Antonio Rotari [1707-1762](oil on canvas 17.4" x 13.9")Rotari was an 18th Century court painter in Italy, Austria and Russia. The painting above...
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Vicissitudes of Pro Sports Management - The 49ers in Crisis
Levi StadiumOn the subtitle of this blog, it reads "rumination on literature, art, politics, music, photography, design (architecture and landscape), wine and spirits, &c." It doesn't mention...
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The Alphabet - A New Classic Children's Book
Reviewing a juvenile title affords me the opportunity to hold forth on a variety of subjects which I don't often discuss here, though I have written at length about three other classic texts, Peter...
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My C Slippers from London
When spouse and I traveled to Scotland in 2005, we stayed briefly in London, so that I could scout the London booksellers, and we could eat at a few choice restaurants there. I'd always wanted to stay...
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Oscar Night 2016
One of the great lessons of my life--if I may--is that the way to make people do something is to make them want to do it, instead of making them feel they should do it. Moral injunctions are useful and...
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Feux d'Artifice
There's a famous piano piece, by Debussy, titled Feux d'Artifice (or "fireworks"). There's a nice rendition of it here on YouTube, performed by Marc-André Hamelin. It's vintage Debussy, filled with...
View ArticleLike an O.Henry Story
One guy told me he’d been working as a plastics engineer in Detroit when he developed marital problems. Following his divorce, he'd decided to take some time off, and flew out to San Francisco for the...
View ArticleNarcolepsy
Then there was the story of the guy who had been a speed-freak, who told me that he’d go into these obsessive quests in the city, diving into dumpsters, frantically driven by the intense intuition that...
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After the Introductions, but Before the Performance
The apéritif is typically a drink served before a meal, ostensibly to aid in digestion, though to what extent this is really the case is dubious at best. Any handy excuse invented for the imbibing of...
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Variations on a Theme
During the Romantic Era in classical music, roughly from 1800 to 1850 (though it continued to be expressed for decades after that), serious European composers enjoyed displaying their prowess in...
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Springtime in Arizona
Spring is here, and that means Spring Training is coming to an end for the big league ball clubs. Rosters are being trimmed, warm-ups and fine-tuning are winding down, and soon the money and the dreams...
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Industrial Landscape Photograph
I'm posting a digital photo here. As many readers here know, I'm a serious black and white landscape photographer. I have a darkroom in my house, set up for silver gelatin and platinum-palladium...
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The Art Dump
Have you ever stood before a painting in a museum and asked yourself why it's supposed to be a work of art?American Abstract Expressionism is very old news. It eventually won the day and became...
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