Last week I reported on the recent history of Anderson Valley’s dump sites and the personalities of the County employees who presided over these social gathering spots important in the Valley’s day-to-day life. And as…
Posts published in “Essays”
Last time we briefly touched on the wanton murders of Native Americans in the early days of Mendocino County, with no punishment rendered. In a tidbit of historical irony, from the time Mendocino became a…
As the atmospheric river unleashed its fury over the winemaker dinner I hosted with my brand manager Johnny Roldan, trouble thundered its way down. The fifty or so guests were four courses deep at the…
This is a Christmas story but might better fit on Page 2 of the Daily Journal because it’s also about crime, except it’s stale for a crime story since it happened 20 years ago, and…
I think it was 1999 and Eddy Lepp said to me, “Oaky Joe you gotta come down the mountain and get your shit legal, now is the time!” Sooooo I followed Eddy’s really bad advice…
Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog, now out on NetFlix, recognizes no borders. It’s a Western that crosses the frontiers of geography, genre, and gender with unapologetic, well-funded ease. Set in 1920s Montana, the film…
In 1969 my husband boarded a military transport bound for what he assumed would be a long flight to Danang. The flight landed instead on the island of Okinawa, where he and another young recruit…
Though we didn't know it at the time, the bustling Emerald Cup held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in December, 2019 — just before Covid-19 hit and the so-called Legal Cannabis Industry got undermined by…
In 1859 Mendocino split off from Sonoma, forming a county of its own. In the first year of its existence marauding militias, like the one led by Walter Jarboe, murdered hundreds of Native Americans in…