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Posts published by “Mark Scaramella”

Major Contributor

Blackbird Under Fire

It would be incorrect to describe last Thursday night’s Blackbird Farm meeting at the Boonville firehouse as "hostile." But most of the 40 or 50 locals who attended the meeting certainly expressed skepticism about Blackbird…

After A Courtship Of 75 Years…

Although the process seems to be dragging out for much longer than anyone expected, the merger of the nonprofit Anderson Valley Ambulance Service with the Anderson Valley Fire Department is close to being a done…

Feds Indict Napa Wine Scammer

A young Napa Valley winemaker named Jeffry James Hill was indicted, arrested and charged with fraud on Thursday by federal authorities. The fraud involved mislabeling cheap grapes and wine as pricey Napa Valley wine. Hill…

My First Paying Job

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 a large boysenberry farm. (Boysenberries are an early 20th Century…

I Was A Teenage Winemaker

Mr. Johnson was the reason I wrote “Chemistry” when asked to fill in the blank entitled “Major: ____” in the fall of 1962 when enrolling at Fresno State College. Mr. Johnson was my highly entertaining…

My First Paying Job

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 a large boysenberry farm. (Boysenberries are an early 20th Century…

Award Winning Cutter Lives In Boonville

Len Feinstein was born in Brooklyn, and raised in Levittown, Long Island, the famous original tract development where every house was essentially the same to cut costs. “My father bought one of the later ones,”…

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