IF YOU ARE EVER FEELING DEPRESSION, despair, regret, dread, hopelessness, helplessness, or gut-wrenching concern for our very lives, our children’s lives, our species’ future, our health, our wealth, our safety and well-being, and this tangled feeling sweeps over you later in the year — say June to early October — then book yourself a ticket […]

“HI, MOM. CAN YOU TAKE THE TWO BOYS THIS WEEKEND? It’s our 17th anniversary.” “Sure, Kristi. We’d be happy to. I’ll come get them.” And thus began a whirlwind weekend at our house. Tyler 12 and Jack 10 were coming to town. I suppose the older we get, the more babysitting could become, “You kids […]

IN MY ONGOING RESEARCH INTO DREAM SMOKERS, I followed another Craigslist lead. Again I was drawn back to Vallejo — well, American Canyon, Vallejo’s Piedmont — back to another welder on Broadway who welds smokers on request. He’s just a short cry up the road from Garnet, who didn’t know of any other local smoker […]

DON’T BUY A SMOKER. Let Garnet weld you one. It will be your one-of-a-kind. I’m in the market to buy me a smoker real soon, once I’ve finished my research. As my wife said with a lot of air, “Last year it was pinball machines. Last spring it was craft beer. Now it’s smoking meat. […]

I HAVE A HAPPY WIFE. Susan is brimming with bubbles. She’s a real joy to be around. To the layman, she may seem the same Susan you’ve known all these years, but people have a public face that is much more constant and convivial than their private face. She’s been carrying some serious weight. Susan […]

TEACHERS NEED TO GET AWAY FROM TEACHING FACTS. Those days are nearly over. It used to be that we had a veritable monopoly on facts. We had the knowledge, the experience, and the textbooks that qualified us as distributors of facts. We also took our books back each year. If someone wanted to know the […]

I PLANNED TO WRITE TWO COLUMNS ABOUT BARBECUE and I’m not going to let a mere 6.0 earthquake deter me. Last week I summarized why I’m so obsessed with smoking meat and how I was planning a Saturday trip to downtown Napa to attend a barbecue festival. The craft beer made me do it. I […]

BEER IS A GATEWAY DRUG. Craft beer is more of a golden gateway drug. I know. I became interested in the craft beer movement innocently over the last year or so, lured in by my son and son-in-law, avid fans. Little did I know that lurking beyond that sudsy horizon was another plane of existence, […]

HERE WE GO AGAIN, BOY AND GIRLS. School starts next week, so I hope you have your eyeballs polished. All seriousness aside, I hope you’re reading this column today because that shows you love reading so much you’ll read anything. Speaking of reading, you know, kids, you get a lot of choices in life. You […]