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A Song for the Unsung
American Football is a team sport. In team sports, it is not always possible to accurately assess the value of any single player's contribution to his team's success. Great players may play on mediocre...
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Bill Berkson Dream
Bill Berkson DreamI’m at the Four Seasons for a quick solitary lunch, sitting at the bar. After a moment or two, I notice Bill Berkson sitting diagonally from where I am, but he doesn’t see me. He’s...
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Absolute Zero
We sit at the edge of something that is so vast that it is inconceivable. But we may be at or near its imaginative center--a vanity which has a seductive quality. What is a thing? Absolute Zero is a...
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The Least Marketable Skill in America (Ya gotta love it)
Only in America.There are ways to make a living, and there are ways to make a living. In America, even criminals can think of themselves as responsible family men. But in the entertainment industry,...
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"Spare the Air Days" - Travesty of Media Manipulation
When I was growing up in the Bay Area in the 1950's, there was little or no regulatory control of air pollution in America. In those days, the route from Northern and Central California, Hiway 80, into...
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Building Castles in the Air
Putting things together, and taking them apart. So much of invention and creativity involves these very crucial processes. Seeing congruencies in nature or technology, imagining new combinations,...
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Tying Shoelaces (Northridge: Santa Susana Press, 1989)
Occasionally, in the book world, you encounter an author, or an artist, who knocks your socks off, whom you've never heard of. You can live with books for 100 years, and there's always someone you...
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Tansman
Alexander Tansman [1897-1986] was a Polish composer in a typical 20th Century mold. Growing up in his native Poland, when it was still apart of old Czarist Russia, in a well-to-do Jewish household in...
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Skunk Hour
We live in a typical densely in-filled suburban residential neighborhood, bounded on the east side of the ridge by a regional park, Tilden Park, which runs north and south along Alameda and Contra...
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Going Green
Everyone wants to be considered ecologically correct these days. The watch word of the day is green. Going green, being green, thinking green, practicing green. The land masses of the earth, from...
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The Conjugal Conundrum - France Confronts Same-Sex Marriage
The French were out demonstrating this last Sunday in Paris and Lyon, against the government's Same Sex Marriage statute, passed and signed into law in May 2013. Recent rumors that the government would...
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Burton Weiss [July 4, 1945 - June 19, 2011]
Photo courtesy of Americana Exchange Monthly@On October 17, 1989, I was still employed at my government job in San Francisco, where I'd been working since April 1974. That day I left work early, as I...
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A Valentine (Delayed)
I have been married to the same woman for almost 45 years. Perhaps this is not noteworthy, despite the epidemic of divorce, and the inclination of people of my "liberated generation" to engage in other...
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Lover's Leap or Lover's Lane
Growing up as a teenager in America has meant, or at least used to mean, for lots of people, getting a car. The car was America's symbol of the freedom--the freedom of the road, the freedom to go where...
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Su-Mee at 47 Months
Su-Mee at 47 MonthsAs readers of this blog may recall, I did an exposé on our pet cat Su-Mee back in November 2012. Su-Mee is one of two Siamese cats we own. We had three, but our oldest one, Coco Rose...
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The Delta and the Gavel
The classification and evaluation of rare books is one of the premier functions of our culture. Great sums of money, amid the rarified atmosphere of finely tuned bibliographical knowledge and the...
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The Clover Blossom Mix
This is the season in California when the clover sprouts out. Clover is a weed, invasive and prolific, though not entirely unwelcome. Its leaves, rounded, in groups of three, make a pleasant...
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The Dilemma - An Intellectual Cocktail
In discourse, the weight of evidence may fall on one side or the other. Of course, it's up to the contestants to "interpret" what raw evidence may signify. Sometimes, in science, or philosophy, or...
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Japanese Protest Nuclear Option
The Japanese national character is divided about equally between traditional respect for authority, and a commitment to technological progress. I lived in Japan for a year in 1985, and was able to see...
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