California

The Golden State

May 14, 2023

I hope this isn’t merely a dream I’m touring California and seeing fog soothe rocks by an ocean shore, lush trees shade a lake, a river glisten under clouds and sky, serene cows calm a meadow, an electric-orange sunset light exotic desert plants in the foreground, mountains overwhelm powerlines and trash in a pond, spring…

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Sunday Morning in the Mines

September 28, 2017

Are you looking at my legs? I bet you are because they’re the best damn legs of anyone in Sunday Morning in the Mines. I know you wonder how my pants, held high by my chest, got those big holes. I don’t remember and don’t want to after another six days digging for gold in…

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Age of Consent

April 27, 2017

A California man I knew long ago is currently in the hot waters of moral indignation and lust for punishment. His alleged crime: having sex with a sixteen-year-old girl, whom I shall correctly call a woman, from June to September a few years ago. At the time he was fifty-four. The district attorney, no doubt…

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Guy Rose Paints a Peasant

December 26, 2015

“Pardon me, Madame,” I say in French to a lady framed in the Crocker Art Museum. “May I ask you a few questions?” “You can see I’m busy, I reckon.” “Yes, but you’ve been at this task a long time and I thought you could take a little break.” “I’ll keep working, go ahead and…

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Drought is God’s Punishment

June 15, 2015

Until last week I thought the drought that’s squeezing California resulted from natural weather fluctuations, and didn’t want to be political or presume to have scientific insight so rarely mentioned climate change and then only as a relatively minor factor. I should’ve known there was a much simpler yet more ominous explanation, and Shannon Grove…

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Gold Rush

January 3, 2013

Poor guy farming hardpan back East hesitated and missed first California opportunity but rode fast and walked hard in eighteen fifty-five for Kern River Rush yielding most miners three, four, even five ounces of gold daily and up to fifty bucks per. Guy didn’t have many good days and following year wadded smart aleck newspaper…

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Interned American

October 15, 2012

I’m doing pretty well for old man. Twenty years ago I retired from gardening at seventy-five. I was in twenties when Pearl Harbor hit and things got bad in California for people like me. I was born here, you know. That didn’t matter. They sent wife, three kids, and me to internment camp up north…

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Saber-Tooth Cat Revisits Red Rock Canyon

April 20, 2012

Let me clarify this point: I like to be called saber-toothed cat. Do not call me a Smilodon, that pompous academic name thrown at us by humans who’ve lived such a short time compared to the millions of years various branches of my family survived and flourished in a world far more beautiful than the…

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Relative Real Estate

February 26, 2012

newspaper says going to be one oh three in bakersfield seventy three in santa barbara but former has lower housing prices

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Wealth

December 8, 2011

This story appears in the collection “In Other Hands”

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Gold Mining

November 22, 2011

miles underground it sleeps while men in saloons forget they have to mine and crush fifty tons ore before pumping particles into cyanide lake to realize but a sparkling ounce Source: Lecture by geologist Tim Elam at the Kern County Historical Society, November 19, 2011.

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Interned American Recalls World War II

November 3, 2011

doing pretty well for old man twenty years ago i retired as gardener at seventy-five i was in twenties when pearl harbor hit and things got bad in california for people like me i was born here you know that didn’t matter they sent my wife three kids and me to internment camp and made…

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Arnold Schwarzenegger Must be President

May 23, 2011

I know many of you believe I failed as Governor of California and am now indisputably a cur since I fathered a child, now age thirteen, with a member of my domestic household staff. You sympathize with my wife, Maria Shriver, because she long endured my infidelities and didn’t learn of this one until recently,…

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General Jerry Brown Promotes Executions

September 23, 2010

It is my ultimate honor as a warrior and patriot to campaign for governor of California in the manner of General Patton, wearing a three-star helmet, a pearl-handle pistol on each hip, and gleaming combat boots on my fast-moving feet. I am Jerry Brown 2010, and have banished the gubernatorial space cadet of the 1970’s…

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Fantasizing on Highway 99

April 26, 2005

Pretty soon you’ve got to drive from Bakersfield to Sacramento.  You are, of course, thankful you don’t have to start further south in Los Angeles and thus crawl up and down scorched and barren mountains that separate the city of glamour and poverty from the rest of the state.  Your journey, instead, will take you…

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Fear Not, California – Bakersfield Shall Save You

November 8, 2004

Have you been to Bakersfield?  Ask that of most people in California and they’ll say, “No, but I’ve been through it.”  They just kept on rolling over parched Central Valley earth en route to Los Angeles or the Bay Area.  Why didn’t they stop?  Perhaps they were startled or saddened by the eternal glare from…

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Arnold Acting on Budget

January 14, 2004

Doesn’t Arnold look good?  No matter what the camera angle or lightning, day or night, inside or outside, that rascal is chiseled and tanned and verily glowing with handsomeness and charm.  You know it.  He’s got a hell of a smile, too, at once split-front toothy and warm and empathetic.  It’s a smile full of…

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