Irv Sutley’s Christmas Offensive

by Bruce Anderson

Irv Sutley was ten years old when he first took on God.

It was 1955, and Sutley was in the fifth grade at Park Elementary School, Mill Valley.

William ‘Bud’ Johnson

by Steve Sparks

I met with Bud at his home on Anderson Valley Way, just north of Boonville, and as I drove up he was practicing his roping on a dummy cow. “I get out here nearly every day to work on it. I’m getting pretty good,” he said with a smile. Bud is a former professional rodeo [...]

Turkey Vulture

by Turkey Vulture

Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comfortably I shall begin. So how was your Christmas? Did the new sweater fit? Did it still fit after dinner? Did you keep the receipt for your nephew’s broken toy? Why was Uncle Stan so drunk and was that the reason Grandpa was so rude to him? [...]

Adult Behavior

by Eric Bergeson

This New Year’s resolution business is for the birds. What we should have is New Week’s resolutions. That way we could acknowledge our failures and come up with something more realistic every few days.
Or, how about New Morning’s resolutions? That’s what the recovery people would advocate. Today, I will not smoke, drink, gamble, live [...]

PTSD

by Bruce Patterson

The late comedian George Carlin did a bit about Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (back then it wasn’t called a Disorder). During WW1, Carlin reminded us, we called it “shell shock.” Now those two words pack some punch, don’t they?

Farm To Farm

by Spec MacQuayde

On Tuesday we had some business involving transporting a young bull to service a couple of Jersey half-breeds at the Frey ranch in Redwood Valley. The bull calf is the third son of my favorite cow, the one with the udder that never needs trimming and the calm temper who lets me handle her newborn [...]

Disappointments In Samarra

by Alexander Cockburn

Hazlitt got gloomily drunk for a fortnight after the battle of Waterloo, accurately anticipating that decades of reaction lay ahead, now that Boney had been definitely put away, with the Holy Alliance in the saddle and the French contagion safely bottled up. Smart fellow, that Hazlitt. He should have stayed drunk for a month.
Sometimes, on [...]

Weed: the Elephant in the DA’s Office

by Mike Geniella

Former prosecutor David Eyster is jumping into the race for Mendocino County District Attorney, setting the stage for a robust debate over the county’s current zigzag approach to prosecution of marijuana and other criminal cases.
Eyster, a Ukiah attorney with a reputation as a tough, skilled prosecutor, is backed by a broad range of supporters from [...]

Letters to the Editor 12/30/2009

by Letters to the Editor

Almost of a year ago, I wrote an editorial for the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat in which I called on Barack Obama to be the hero the country so sorely needed (“We Need a Hero,” SRPD, 1/18/09).

Great Moments In Public Deliberation

by Mark Scaramella

The following is a verbatim transcript of an exchange between County Supervisor John McCowen and Mendocino County Assessor-Clerk Recorder Susan Ranochak at the Board of Supervisors Meeting, December 15, 2009. The topic was a series of fee increases in Public Defender, District Attorney, Court Collections and County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor offices.
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Supervisor McCowen: Are these [...]