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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Temple Sweeper
12 May 1974. Josh may be dying. It seems so witless and so unreal. I cannot relate to him as other than a living force. Words seem superfluous to the privacy and loneliness of his experience. He is Josh as he always has been; I make clumsy assurances of my love and hope. My suffering for him can only make it harder.
December 1977Common Sense As Cosmic Sense
To live by the heart alone is to impose no order on one’s world, to burn out in a frenzy. If one does not temper one’s experience with both logic and feeling, both discernment and love, then one is treading close to the edge of the abyss. The unquestioned heart is as extreme as the unquestioned mind.
December 1977Breasts: A Lesson In Self-Discovery
The room temperature should be comfortable but a bit on the cool side to insure the full development of the castle and each of the respective pawns and moats of the areola.
December 1977The Chain Gang
Consumers foot the bill for the supermarket monopolies. And what a bill! A 1975 government report found that 41% of the increase in food margins in a nine-year period was the result of rising advertising and promotional expenses — money spent not to better our diet but to manipulate us as shoppers.
December 1977Excerpts From RAIN
Journal Of Appropriate Technology
RAIN is one of my favorite magazines. Published monthly in Portland, Oregon, RAIN calls itself “a monthly information access journal and reference service for people developing more satisfying patterns that increase local self-reliance and press less heavily on our limited resources.”
December 1977Hillsborough: Queen Of The Piedmont
According to the Hillsborough Chamber of Commerce, “at least 116 late 18th and early 19th century structures” still grace the town’s quiet streets. Many are beautifully preserved and marked for the passerby.
December 1977David Searls Loves The Sun
A Romance
I want to hold the Sun-connections of my life up to the light, like a five-inch-tall Italian standing, hands aloft, under a heap of the finest spaghetti. I want to shake the November Sun at the world, and testify like a Baptist in heat.
December 1977Breadmen’s
The Rose In The Greasy Fist
I’ll start with a startling admission: in this, The New Age, the closest I come to feeling part of a community is at an all-night cafe just down the block called Breadmen’s.
December 1977Temple Sweeper
The drug habits of Americans — that’s “legal” drugs, obtained by prescription or off the grocery and drugstore shelves — is alarming.
November 1977Shadow Dancing
Autumn comes, summer ends . . . so quickly. The fire is momentarily resurrected in dazzling fall days, brilliant changing falling leaves. I compete with birds and squirrels for the bounty of fruit, nuts, berries.
November 1977Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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