Monthly Archives: January 2019

  Graham Haig and I took a group of high school students on a canoe trip on the Russian River. Graham was an exchange teacher from England, coach of the soccer team, and he was one of the advisors of … Continue reading →

Ferries.  They plied the bay when I was a teenager and up until I was driving.  The Richmond San Rafael ferry required a drive out a long narrow road that ended in a single lane pier that stretched out into … Continue reading →

  Hampton and LaSalle. On that corner in Piedmont there was a vacant lot.  It was in a posh neighborhood, but it was level, a bit weedy, mostly sandy smooth enough for a pickup baseball field.   On Saturdays we gathered, no … Continue reading →

Paul and I slept on summer nights on the roof deck above the kitchen alcove at 221 Carmel Avenue.The house had heavy blackout curtains that were drawn over the windows at supper time. Great Uncle Howard was a block warden, … Continue reading →

The power went out. For fifteen hours it was dark in the house.  And, as I lay awake at three in the morning I thought of those lines that run above our street. They were empty.  The current that runs through them … Continue reading →

One of the things I never tire of is the late afternoon light going off the shoulder of Mt. Tamalpais.  The folds of the mountain darken, the ridges still alight, and then it becomes a shadowy outline.   I watch it … Continue reading →

Graham on the right, guide Dubs on the left with a big snook that Graham caught in Belize. The photograph on my desk shows Graham and Geoffrey posing for the camera on October 17, 1998. They both wear fishing vests, … Continue reading →

Sofia Strempek decided that as favors for dinner guests at her wedding she wanted to give away jars of apple chutney. So she and her mother, Ellen, bought sixty-five little jars and I showed up on a Saturday morning  with … Continue reading →

Scruffy had a long rap sheet at the Marin Humane Society.  He would sneak out and wander Corte Madera, into the school yard, and in and out of shops in the mall until finally someone called the dog catcher and … Continue reading →

I sold cameras for Bill McDuffie at the Camera Center in San Rafael for several years.  I told Bill it wasn’t all that different from teaching. Selling English to 30 teenagers who basically didn’t want it was harder than selling … Continue reading →