Featured Writings
Clint Eastwood Presents a Master Class in Stewardship at Tehama
Clint Eastwood is mesmerized. He puts lunch on hold and stares intently at the flat screen TV at the Saloon in the Clubhouse at Tehama. A few miles down the road, the third round of the US Open Golf Championship is underway at Pebble Beach, which Eastwood owns with a group of partners. But instead of fighting the crowds at this most famous of golf courses, Pebble’s co-owner opts to watch the Open at Tehama, his 2,000-acre sanctuary high above the Carmel Valley and the Monterey Peninsula.
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The Cup
It is called "the race that stops a nation." And rightly so. The Melbourne Cup does more than dominate Thoroughbred racing Down Under; it mesmerizes all of Australia. Cup Day, which, as any Aussie will tell you, falls on the first Tuesday in November, is a holiday throughout Victoria. And judging from the number of empty offices and unanswered phones in Sydney and Canberra, it is a national holiday in everything but name.
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WD Ranch
Unless it's a phone interview, most writing assignments start out the same old way: planes, trains, and automobiles. You get the gig, you hit the road, and you get the job done, be it at a hotel or on a movie set or in some foreign country. Not so with Tommy Lee Jones.
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Pickens Plan
Outside the Midwest summer sun has pushed the temperature well above 100. Inside Topeka’s Heritage Hall, it’s standing room only, and there’s still half an hour to go before Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius takes the stage to introduce T. Boone Pickens at the very first Pickens Plan town hall meeting. The fire marshal has already collared building personnel and informed them that the capacity crowd of 500 exceeds the city’s fire code. Over the next half hour, hundreds more show up. All are barred from entering, yet not one of them turns away. Instead, they choose to sit outside in the scorching heat and listen in over the public address system.
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A Night in Napa
The Napa Valley. If you haven’t been there, don’t worry. When you die, if you go to heaven, there you’ll be. At day’s end, the setting sun drops behind the Mayacamas, a rocky red volcanic ridge that lords over the valley floor, cordoning off Napa from Sonoma just 30 miles from the shores of the Pacific. After dark, this rampart becomes a spillway for the cool, moist air that hurries in from the beach over the hills down to the vines. This is Cabernet country. Sunshine is abundant. Nights are cool. Roots run deep.
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The New York Times
Assignments for The New York Times have covered a host of topics, including Carl Icahn, the NFL, and Willie Nelson. In 1997, Eric was one of the first journalists to report on the shooting death of 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez Jr. by Cpl. Clemente Banuelos, a U.S. Marine on a drug interdiction training mission near Redford, Texas. The high school student was the first U.S. civilian killed by active duty military personnel since the Kent State shootings in 1970. Eric also reported for The Times on the 1998 settlement by the Department of the Navy and the Justice Department with the Hernandez family. The shooting subsequently inspired The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), a movie directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones.
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