Section: Mediations

About this Section:

“Mediations” was a column of cultural and media criticism published in the Santa Cruz Magazine, a weekly newspaper that followed from the Santa Cruz Phoenix, Express, and Sun-may they all rest in peace!

A Love Letter to Readers

The passing of a newspaper is a little like a death—a voice, a resonance, a presence falls silent. Also lost is the community a newspaper establishes with its audience. Reading at best is a kind of conversation—you talk back and throw the page down, or nod and read snippets to your friends on the phone. […]


The Business of Dying

  Look around your house. Look at the piles of unanswered letters, the bills and parking tickets left simmering until a brighter tomorrow, the files you brought home from the office and haven’t touched, the part for the water heater glowering in the junk drawer. Look at your kids, the baby cereal caked behind their […]


Time Will Tell

“These eight years went fast,” my father said to me on my eight birthday. “The next eight will go twice as fast, and the next twice as fast as that, this way your whole life.” Staring at the dust on my new cowboy boots, I remember feeling confused and embarrassed, the way I always did […]


About Mediations

“Mediations” was a column of cultural and media criticism published in the  Santa Cruz Magazine, and followed from ones published the Santa Cruz Phoenix, Express, and Sun–may they all rest in peace!