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R.I.P. Junkyard Gary

My friend Junkyard Gary Watson died last night.

Gary had a face like a road map. Hard living had etched itself permanently into his skin.

Over the years, he eked out a meager living for himself as a house painter and junk dealer. He drove a battered old pickup truck. He collected still-useful junk from […]

All the way to the top

It doesn’t surprise me that the Roman Catholic child sex abuse crimes and cover-ups go all the way up to the Pope. That seems to be how child sex abuse works in so many dysfunctional families, communities, and institutions. The entire community (or family, or institution) folds in on itself to cover and protect […]

Tough Justice: Is the Harper agenda a phony war on crime?

Last night CBC’s Sunday Edition hosted a community forum called “Tough Justice: Is the Harper agenda a phony war on crime?”

It drew a full house at the Gladstone Theatre. The first hour consisted of questions and answers posed by Michael Enright to the six panelists. The second hour was questions from the audience.

The panelists […]

Duncan, Phoebe and the Barn Owls

Duncan in his leopard skin carrier

Duncan had his annual checkup yesterday, and guess what? He’s lost three pounds! He’s down to 19 pounds now. The vet says good for him, but he could still stand to lose a few more.

“He’s a big cat,” she said.

He’s also got some tartar on his teeth, […]

More buried evidence

Last week commenter Kim Bosch laughed about the fact that I literally buried a lie when I was eight years old, which reminded me of other lies I buried that year. Eight, apparently, was the Year of Burying Incriminating Evidence. I puzzled over this while reminiscing. What deep psychological forces were at work that would […]

Akili Castlin

John A

Last night GC and I found ourselves at the Umi Cafe for a book launch and poetry reading. The author of the book, Akili Castlin, was not there, because he’s in Pelican Bay State Prison in California. He’s 37 years old. He’s been incarcerated since he was 23. He’s been in solitary […]

Two of my faves: R.I.P.

J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, and Dr. Howard Zinn, activist and author of The People’s History of the U.S., both just died.

I know they were old (91 and 87 respectively) and they led full lives, and they had to go sometime, but…I feel sad.

The dirty, dirty dictionary

Remember when you were eight years old and looking up words like “fart” in the dictionary? (We all did that, right? It wasn’t just me?)

Well, a school district in southern California has banned the Merriam-Webster dictionary from classrooms because of its sexually graphic nature.

The offending term that triggered the ban was oral sex (defined […]

A funeral procession for a slain police officer

I attended Constable Eric Czapnik’s funeral procession today. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, since I’d never witnessed a cop’s funeral procession before. But it was a pretty impressive sight, and a remarkable display of solidarity.

Lately I haven’t known what to think of cops anymore. I’ve met some who don’t deserve my respect, and […]

The corpse in the casket

When my son was about six or seven years old, he was seized with a sudden urge to see a dead body.

“I want to see a dead body,” he informed me solemnly.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about a picture of a dead body?”

“No,” he said. “A real one.”

I wavered and procrastinated. Sometimes he had these sudden […]