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How to Read a Mug Adolf Hitler's strained smile was frightful, it gave away too much, even embarrassed him, and he always brought a hand up like a claw to cover it. No one has …
Seventy-five When I was a child, my mother took me to Central Park and spread a blanket for me to sit and play on, and if I strayed onto bare grass she would pick me …
Prodigals They speak better English, with better intonations and slang. They listen to American music and Japanese groups like Lunatic Lion or Ayumi Nakamura, whose album covers and song titles burst with English, who slip …
Tijuana Mi Amor Marcos lived for months at the Hotel San Francisco, on Calle Primera, across from La Funeraria San Martin. His room was littered with Argentine novels and Communist literature from Latin America. The …
A 180-million-year-old Friend It was sheer proximity that charmed me. His claws were as thin as embroidery floss unraveled, and he had a wisp of grass on his head, which gave him an agreeably foolish …
The Last Vaquero I’d tell Mollie where I was gonna camp, and she’d pack the ol’ mule and drag him around till I got to that camp, and she’d have it all set up. The …
The Tubes of My Life 1966, home from college. Nothing better to do than sit around with mom and dad and watch some wretched WW2 thingie with Jack Warden held captive in the South Pacific. …
The Tale of an Elephant The worst of Jouett’s problems were yet to come. Media representatives wanted to be present when Cindy arrived in mid-December. The elephant trainer and keepers wanted no one there. They …
Magical Dwarf’s Sad Orbit Maybe it’s premature to call someone an astronomer while they’re still in graduate school, but it would probably be okay in Ben Oppenheimer’s case because he and another graduate student had …
Climbing Some millions of years from now, the San Jacintos will look the way the White Mountains in Vermont do now: soft and rounded. The Sierras of Yosemite are granitelike quartz diorite, like the San …
For more celebrities, click here. For author celebrities, click here. For public figure and fraud celebrities, click here. For sports celebrities, click here. Bursting With the Relentless Energy of All Human Life Do you remember …
Hell with the Fire Gone Out There is a small library in town, but not a single stoplight. Parking is free. There is no hospital in Borrego, which, I’m told, militates against larger development. A …
Soul of a City I left Kensington and found an apartment in the College Heights section. I thought that living near the university might be like living in the small New England college town where …
The Imperial Valley Paradox Cesar Enriquez is the director of Casa de Amistad, a community center in Brawley that works with farm workers. “I really was a believer in what our hero, Emiliano Zapata, said: …
Diary of an Orange Grove About 45 percent of the water in Fallbrook flows into groves, nurseries, and fields. In Rainbow 95 percent of the water is agricultural; in Valley Center, 85 percent. But when …
Party’s Over "At first it was sporadic," she said. "It was, like, for two years, the same group of people, and it bothered us, but it was every once in a while. Then, this past …
Moon for the Misbegotten Pearce snapped away while Arenas’s city uniform was draped around his ankles. Then it got ugly. Arenas and two other public employees allegedly grabbed Pearce, pushed him around, stole the camera, …
The Reader dines out at the Shanghai in La Jolla The appetizers are good but not unusual, and the egg roll pastry (but not the filling) is the best I’ve ever eaten. The shellfish dishes, …
Deepak’s Six Pack No doubt about it: Deepak Chopra has the New Age set enthralled. This is Wayne Dyerland. Past-Lives Therapyland. Verging on the spiritual turf of Linda Evans and Ramptha, her 5th-century revived adviser …
For more celebrities, click here. For author celebrities, click here. For thinker and artist celebrities, click here. For sports celebrities, click here. Best Wishes Always He had 1000 letters printed: “I have a collection of …