Essays – Page 305 – Anderson Valley Advertiser

My First Paying Job

By Mark Scaramella on September 28, 2016

I was 13. It was 1958. We lived at what was then the outskirts of suburban Fresno. Down the street about half a mile was…

Booksellers

By Valeria Luiselli on September 28, 2016

My daughter and I returned to Paris under the blazing sun of July. We were coming from Burgundy, where I had written a sad, angry note for this column, after the mass murder in Nice, about how our cultural baggage is obsolete and doesn't help us face the horror of our times; about how the myth of Paris had died in our arms. But I was wrong about one thing. Because, although culture in the abstract no longer anchors us to this complex, fucked-up world, there do in fact remain places--a few--from which we can rethink our role in the world and imagine alternate ways of organizing life.

Magenta Queen

By Todd Walton on September 28, 2016

I recently completed my new novel Magenta and brought the book out in handsome coil-bound photocopies, each copy signed and lavishly numbered, available through my web site or by bumping into me in Mendocino and arranging an exchange.

At The End Of The River

By Michael Koepf on September 28, 2016

Cattails. I saw them for the first time this summer. A patch was growing on the south bank, another at the end of the small island that lies near the river’s mouth that’s currently blocked by sand. Cattails exist on the periphery of ponds and marshes. They are abundantly seen in bogs. Cattails are often deliberately planted in slow, effluent-bearing streams flowing from wastewater treatment plants. Cattails remove nutrients—usually ammonia from animal waste or fertilizers. Ammonia accelerates algae growth. Unfortunately—as yet—there are not enough cattails to remove the nutrients in the estuarine mouth of the Navarro River.

Police Shootings