It’s been tough sledding for newspapers the past 30 years. Allow me to elaborate. The first two newspapers I worked on were The Plain Dealer (once the biggest newspaper in Ohio) and the Cleveland Press…
Posts published in “Essays”
Long ago, the apple industry coined and popularized the slogan, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” A recent study concludes that the available evidence does not support that notion. Still it appears that…
The last of the Mendocino Outlaws to be captured, George Gaunce and Harrison Brown, stood trial in Santa Rosa in the first week of December, 1880. Both had gained a change of venue for their…
Everyone in the northern California cannabis world knew of Frenchy Cannoli who proselytized tirelessly for hashish and who provided a living link to Europe and to the world where hashish was born. Frenchy died in…
We should start asking ourselves what our limits might be regarding traveling criminals who have found Ukiah an agreeable place to squat. I’ve not been keeping score but it seems on the one hand local…
My mother got out of brain surgery and after a couple weeks in rehab she went home. One sister traveled five hundred miles north to take care of her and both were up during the…
We try to take Sundays off at our Hoosier farmhouse, and not even open the roadside stand along State Road 135 in the village of Vallonia. Closing up the store on Saturday night, we packed…
Charlotte Hoak grew up in the wilds of Comptche, born in 1874 on ranch land that had formerly been under the jurisdiction of the local Pomo leader, Comptche — the name the region became known…
An early August road trip heading east from the city of Ithaca across New York State promises calm, pastoral progress. With farming in steep decline the forest has for decades been reclaiming large swaths of…