I am lying in a meadow high in the Rocky Mountains. The sun is warm and comforting. I watch the clouds, puffy white in the blue sky, but soon pull a cap over my eyes…
A Lucky Man, Episode 4 (last one!)
VII. By the time Clyde got the letter telling him the date of the arbitration hearing, he was nearly out of money. He’d made house payments, but the rest of the bills were overdue and…
A Lucky Man, Episode 3
V. A factory is a battle zone. Nothing better illustrates the slogan that “time is money” than the daily struggle between workers and bosses to squeeze a little more free time or a little more…
A Lucky Man, Episode 2
III. Like everyone else, Clyde Yassem remembered what he had been doing on December 7, 1941. Sleeping. His parents and two of his younger brothers rushed in to awaken him and tell him the news. He…
A Lucky Man: Episode 1
I. [Note: This is a story from my book, In and Out of the Working Class. I am posting it in episodes, so stay tuned!] Sometimes a random event can change a person’s life. Clyde Yassem…
The "I" and the "we"
We have been nearly fifty days in California. It is a state of geographical extremes: the deserts, the Sierras, the long ocean coast, and the central valleys. It is a great agricultural state, and every…
Teaching the Vets
When I first began to teach, I had many veterans from the war in Vietnam in my classes. Between my first year in 1969 and the revolutionary victory in 1975, tens of thousands of soldiers…
Happy Birthday Irene Marie
My mother turned eighty-five years old on January 26. She's a small, grey-haired woman with plenty of wrinkles. When she was young, she had long brown hair and a pretty Italian face. She and my…
St. Vincent College: From Liberal Arts to a…
[This was originally published as "Fear and Loathing at St. Vincent College" at http://www.counterpunch.org/yates12252009.html] I attended St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania (hometown of legendary golfer Arnold Palmer and once the home of Rolling Rock…