Fireman Phil came to Marble Elementary School.  We first-graders were gathered in the school gym, seated cross-legged on the floor.  What makes a fire?  How do you stop it?  Do you throw water on oil (no!)?  This is a fire extinguisher. If you are on fire, don’t run–drop and roll.  It’s been over 60 years… Read More

The fire was blowing along the ridgeline in our direction.  Trees were candling—igniting and throwing off firebrands--burning hunks of wood. Now the fire had jumped the vast concrete firebreak of Hwy 24 into the Oakland Hills.  Read More

Monsoons are more than just rainy days.  They are the wet season, the dry season’s counterpoint.  The rains are intense downpours, not drizzly affairs, and they sweep in ferociously. They are the annual water renewal that makes life possible.  Of course, that is changing along with the rest of the climate, but still. The small… Read More

Exploring the unexpected. Read More

People at San Francisco General Hospital emergency room had T shirts printed up that included the tag line: “as real as it gets”.  That pretty much summed up the big urban County Hospital experience where I was a medical student.   The ER was where lives in crisis ended up—there, or in prison, or sometimes both.… Read More

Was there anyone on the panel who could not give equal weight to the testimony of a police officer? Read More

The UFW had some simple housing available in a local apartment building in Calexico, where I had stayed the first time.  It was pretty bleak, and soon one of my union contacts offered that I could stay at his place on the other side of the border, in Mexicali. Read More

Nighttime in our community hospital was something to be dreaded when I was a resident.  It meant I was on overnight call, following a regular day’s work.  The hospital emptied of the day staff and visitors, leaving limited lab and imaging services, fewer nurses, a couple of physicians and emergency room staff–tag, you’re “it”.  When… Read More

How clear it seems in retrospect. Read More

My mother sometimes asked when she started looking old. I notice I look a lot more like her every day. Read More