Latest From This Author
Every year, summer reading lists are published, with “beach reads, perfect for the season.”
The first time I saw the images of “In the Sunshine of Neglect” — an exhibition in Riverside by curator Douglas McCulloh on the vast territory of landscapes in my beloved native county — a beautiful confluence of memory, history, image and dreams came pooling into the space.
I came to know death through short stories. I was nine years old.
The latest California secession movement showed off its fantasy map of the state last month.
Since I was a child, I’ve been obsessed with photographs, probably because I’m of the generation between nothing and everything.
You might not believe it.
John Rechy, his skin still beautifully burnished and brown when I saw him last year, his forearms still powerful, his words unfurling with precise irony and humor, is a writer I’ve been thinking about in the evening while looking at the horizon just after the sun has hesitated in the western sky.
In September, in Nebraska, my dog and I saw an elk head on the roof of a white Suburban, the spreading antlers glistening with dew, the massive skull wrapped in blue plastic, in a service area off Interstate 80.
The Fourth of July I remember most vividly from my childhood in Riverside was an anarchic celebration on a huge green field where my brother almost lost an eye.
