“C” Words: START READING!
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The GOP & Sunk Cost Fallacy
“Sunk cost fallacy” is a form of self-justification for continuing either a behavior or endeavor. The excuses are based on previous investments of time, money, reputation, etc., and is often exacerbated by hating to lose. Or a stubborn unwillingness to try something different.
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Whining Isn’t Winning
If you we born during or after the MTV age, you may have no clue how easy we’ve had it as a country over the last seventy-five years. Those who were born between 1901 and 1928 lived through World War I, the global pandemic of the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and World War II. […]
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Soledad Moonlight
I’m so busy with script development and a rewrite of my new feature film, I don’t have time to write a new column. Instead I’m sharing test shots that I did with my Sony α7 and a pro-quality GM-series 400mm lens. Soledad Canyon is in the Angeles National Forest between Santa Clarita and Palmdale; not […]
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The Mountaintop
What I love most about hiking is how it mirrors life. A good hike combines long, hard slogs uphill, relatively level stretches to catch your breath, and brushes with mortal danger. Best of all is that last agonizing push to the top where blessed relief and a spectacular view is your reward for never giving […]
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“Gilded Cage”
A fucked up poem for a fucked up woman. I realized only later what a huge favor you did, doing me like that. It did have its moments, but… She climbs and flits and soars and glides,the feathered beauty, so alive, so free to fly and flythen one fine day she ‘lights upon a sill […]
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Remembering Margo St. James, Part 2
On January 12th, 2021, legendary sexworker activist Margo St. James passed away in Bellingham, WA after a stroke. She was notorious in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she founded the prostitutes’ rights organization, C.O.Y.O.T.E. in 1973. While she was famous for attention-getting pranks—one time she dressed as a nun and made out with a […]
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In Memoriam: Margo St. James
Remembering the “Coyote Trickster” Margo St. James Last night I got word that one of my childhood heroines, sexworker activist Margo St. James, was no longer with us. I wrote of Ms. St. James more than once when I contributed regularly to Spectator, an adult weekly newspaper in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1991, […]
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Lord of the Flaws
I recently re-watched the movie version of William Golding’s classic story Lord of the Flies. It chilled me in high school. What’s most disturbing is to see the story’s dynamic play out over and over again all of these decades. This is especially true in politics and cultural evolution. If you’ve never read Lord of […]
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Valerie
VALERIE is the tale of an abused 17-year-old who flees to to Hollywood to find it’s even more of a nightmare than home. Will she find a happy ending before the end finds her? A short student film by Christine D. Beatty screened at the Hollywood Reel Film Festival in 2018. It has found a […]
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Wicked Wanda
I needed a short break from politics and this seemed like a good way to it. This poem is the first piece I wrote for my 1993 chapbook Misery Loves Company. It’s a tribute to my bestest best friend in the world, without whom I would have literally been dead several times over. She and […]
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Satan’s True Minions
“What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he’s around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. … He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and […]
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The Bryant Patch
A true story from Christine’s chapbook Misery Loves Company about the time her lover tried to “break” into jail for a conjugal visit at the SF Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant Street.