Authors Electric

Back in the nineties, I was editor of Diablo , a glossy, monthly San Francisco East Bay "lifestyle" magazine. My coworkers and I used to call " Diablo " Hell's Home and Garden  published for Satan and friends.  Except for a few years in parochial school, I've never been very religious. Up until now, that is.  Even Presidente Trumpy and his corrupt MAGA cultists haven't gotten me to church -- much as I would find it comforting to believe. But the Mr. Incontinent, Orange Diaper Man, has succeeded in getting me to believe in Satan.  I don't think Satan has a Faustian deal with the Rump. That would give Dump too much credit. The devil has too much style for the phony likes of Fatso Wiggo.  Rump does get away with all manner of crimes and corruption at the moment. But his house of Fool's Gold is crumbling and will soon fall. Meanwhile, America's  Orange Fascist provides the devil a handy tool to bamboozle the greedy and ignorant, pry civilization...

  Then SF Mayor Dianne Feinstein, c 1980 My stomach clutched when I heard that Dianne Feinstein had died at 90 last week. It wasn't from personal grief, although I admired the California senator greatly. Neither was it due to recalling the few times we had crossed paths over the years. Nor was it an unavoidable reminder that, at age 86, I could well be next -- lucky to have lived this long myself. No. It was from what I'll call post-embarrassment guilt syndrome -- a half-forgotten missed lunch.  It seems like a triviality from the perspective of the late senator's lifetime of monumental accomplishments. Nevertheless, it makes me wince.  Her distinguished political career spanned more than half a century, including ten years as mayor of San Francisco and thirty one years as  a U.S. senator. The longest for any woman in the US Congress with a long lists of firsts, it took in tragedies, wars, losses and triumphs.  Few have had greatness thrust upon them as brutall...