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Posts published by “Thom Elkjer”

Covid Confidential

Really, I had no idea. We’re all ambitious in my family, but hardly any of my cousins have become as famous as me. Visiting every country in the world. Hosted by presidents, princes, prime ministers.…

The Crown: Stop Watching

The first two seasons of “The Crown,” the Netflix series about Queen Elizabeth of England, were intriguing. A young princess gets accelerated onto the throne years before she expects, while her family struggles to catch…

You Watched the Fire? Here’s What You Saw

The conflagration in downtown Boonville last Thursday afternoon drew crowds of neighbors, valley locals, and firefighters. If you were among the first two groups, you might have some questions about what the third group was…

Smells Like Money

If you’re like most people in the valley, you get to Boonville fairly often. You eat in the cafes, you hit Rossi or the Drive-in, get some groceries at Boont Berry or AV Market. You’ve…

A Peach Of A Fire

Antoinette and I were about to leave Boonville for Ukiah on Thursday July 5 when our pagers went off. We immediately checked if they signaled an ambulance emergency. They did not, so we didn’t have…

Sonoma Clean Power Play

What if the revolution came, and we missed it because we tossed out the announcement? Seems like that’s what happened last month, when PG&E customers in Mendocino County got word that the utility no longer…

Why I’m an EMT

I became an EMT because of natural disasters I witnessed in the Bay Area. In 1989, I was in an office building near the epicenter of the Loma Prieta earthquake, and saw things happen to…

Homage to Brian Blumberg

Economists use the phrase “essential utility” to describe something so important to a community that it must be owned or regulated by the community. For Anderson Valley, Brian Blumberg was an essential utility who regulated…

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