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By Joe Smith
Every autumn on the first day of hunting
season, deer appear in my backyard. I don't know if they're
the same animals every year or how they know so precisely the
time to seek a haven from men in plaid jackets wielding fire
sticks. One morning the deer are simply there, as if they'd
been mailed copies of the hunting regulations...
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| EARTHQUAKE
OR FIRE? - Part II: Waiting for the Big One |
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By Louis Martin
He looks like a survivor, this one. Big guy, about sixty,
gray hair straight back, bad-boy baseball cap on backwards,
T-shirt, shades, and arms with recessed splotches looking
like old burns. His cab is parked at the Fairmont Hotel
on Nob Hill in San Francisco, the only structure other than
the Flood mansion that survived the Big One of '06....
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| Millenniumn
Bug |
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By Joe Smith
About the time of the spring equinox the
gray whales passing the Mendocino headlands slow down and
veer towards the shore to rubberneck the tourists gathered
on the bluffs. Thewhales, fresh from happy matings in the
tepid, colorful watersoff Baja, wish to amuse their spawn
with the curious sight of bipeds in leisure apparel clutching
glasses of fruity Chardonnay ...
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| EARTHQUAKE
OR FIRE? - Part I: Revising the Facts
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By Louis Martin
It is early June and there
are a few tourists walking north along Leavenworth towards
the Cannery and all that tourist stuff at the edge of the
Bay. It is a bright clear day with just little white puffs
of drifting clouds. It is such a pretty day, in fact, that
it is hard to imagine any other kind of day here in the
City....
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| Witness
Tree: Skunk |
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By Joe Smith
In August they go walking down the Skunk Train tracks to
their favorite swimming hole on the river. Redwoods shield
them from the sun for the first half mile. Rays from that
nearest star stream through chinks in the dense green canopy,
shafts of light choked with dust and pollen, millions of
small deaths ...
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| Faces
in the Clouds: Nob Hill Visions |
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By Louis Martin
You can hate it, you can despise it, you can call it "Snob
Hill" in a fit of rage and condemn everyone who has
ever lived there. But when you calm down and look around,
you've got to admit there is no place like it....
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