Today, I needed to clear the final recall notice on my faithful Ram pickup. So of course, as is my habit, after dropping the truck off at the dealers I went to talk to the homeless folks. I’ve written about this curious habit of mine in previous posts entitled “Fixing The Brakes“, “Fixing The EGR“,…

Once again, I had to take my Ram pickup truck to the dealer. This time, it was just to make sure it was OK before the warranty ran out. And once again, I bought a pack of smokes and went out to talk to the homeless.  The first people I ran into were Mack and…

After I wrote my most recent piece about wandering around in the world of the homeless, called “Fixing The EGR“, some folks accused me of being compassionate. Funny, but I don’t see it that way at all, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that we grew up without much money. My “new”…

My faithful Ram 1500 had a recall notice for the Exhaust Gas Recirculating system. They said it would take about four hours, so I figured I’d wander the streets of Santa Rosa. In a previous post called “Fixing The Brakes” I spoke about how I think it’s wrong to ignore the homeless. I don’t mean…

In this New Year, to counterbalance these most fractious times I thought I’d tell a tale of humanity and caring. I’ve had the privilege of living in a wide variety of countries and societies. And having not always been entirely sane myself, one way that I judge societies is by how they handle their crazy folks.…

I was watching the TV series “Call The Midwife” tonight with my gorgeous ex-fiancée. It takes place back in 1964. Two of the characters were old gay men, very much in love in a society where it was still “the love that can’t be named”, the love that at the time was still very illegal…

My old friend Patrick Purcell is a wonderful man with a lovely Solomon Islands wife … … a bunch of children and grandchildren, and even more friends. I’ve known him for thirty years and more. I last saw him when I was in the Solomons a couple years ago. We caught up on old times,…

Here, in order from the top, is the story of my wandering into the world of LSD-assisted psychotherapy … a strange tale indeed, and kids, don’t try this at home … Best to all, w. Another Tale of Derring-Don’t Well, now that Justice Kavanaugh has endured the attempted suspension of the presumption of innocence, and…

I had breakfast today with an old friend of mine I hadn’t crossed paths with in a while. And by an “old friend”, I mean a guy like me in his seventies. We spoke of many things, including the evanescent quality of life, which reminded me of my dear friend and father-in-law, Billy. So I…

I said a bit ago that I’d be offline for a couple of weeks because I was going to the Nevada desert. As some folks correctly surmised, I was headed for that bizarre congregation of extremophiles called “Burning Man”. And what is Burning Man? It is an eight-day festival of the impossible. It is a…