I grew up in Santa Cruz. My dad was in mid-level management at a disk manufacturer in Scotts Valley. We lived in a suburban neighborhood that was fortunately across the road from Henry Cowell Redwood State Park near Felton, which I really treasure. Most everything I understand about our relationship with ecosystems I learned from the redwood forest. My mom was a stay-at-home mom for a big part of my child, an incredibly sharp, intelligent person who went back to school when she was in her 40s and got an advanced math degree. Now she’s a community college instructor. So I had a caring and intellectually-oriented mom who had a big influence on me.
Posts published by “Dave Smith”
I was born during the last part of World War II, in a town called Oostvoorne, The Netherlands on the North Sea along the English Channel in 1944 during the Allied invasion and bombings of Germany. The anti-aircraft guns and German bunkers were set up on our shore to shoot down Allied planes, and we lived right there. A Canadian pilot was shot down over the town and got hung up in a tree, and before the Germans could get to him, Dutch people who lived nearby rescued him and brought him to my father and asked to hide him.
The Decater family runs Live Power Community Farm in Covelo, a diversified, solar-powered CSA farm that for 27 years has supplied its 200 member families here in Mendocino County, and the Bay Area, with fresh, high-quality biodynamic/organic food. They plow and till the land with their six draft horses. Besides growing almost fifty varieties of vegetables, they raise sheep, cows, chickens, and pigs.
Author’s Note: For the first time in over seven years, the Ford brothers — Mark, Patrick, and Robben — will share the same stage — and it will be in their home town of Ukiah…
That last tour with Charlie Musselwhite was pretty brutal. Sharon and I wanted to have kids, and this is where we wanted to have them, so we moved back home to Ukiah in 1974. I…
When I was four, my parents gave me a toy drum kit, and then later in second grade I took piano lessons for awhile, then along about 6th grade I started really getting interested in…
If you’re an old timer around these parts, you know the Ford family, and the four Ford boys, Steve, Patrick, Robben, and Mark. The brothers are locals and have played music around Mendocino County and…