California has one of the worst Covid vaccine injection rates in the country. Much disrespected, impoverished West Virginia, where I began my work as a journalist many moons ago, has one of the best rates.…
Posts published in “Essays”
Dr. Carl Hart, a neuroscientist on the Columbia University faculty, is the most audaciously radical thinker in the drug-policy-reform field, and the bravest. His new book was mildly praised the New York Times Book Review…
Anderson Valley Village is a locally inspired and managed non-profit organization. Our mission is to help older adults remain active, connected, and independent in the place they call home while enhancing the quality of life…
Reviewing my notes and sifting through relevant historical documents, it appears the last era in which I qualified as genuinely hip (or was it hep?) was in the mid- to late-‘70s. Since then it’s been…
“I was in the same mold as Joe DiMaggio. Nothing flashy. What you saw on Monday was the same thing you got on Friday.” – Henry Aaron, RIP 1/21/21 In 1957, the year the Milwaukee…
The other day, my housemate thought she saw flames on the adjoining property. She called the fire department in Cotati, California where we live. Two fire trucks arrived with fire fighters loaded for bear. The…
It has been a few weeks since I last sat down to write. It has been a tough couple of weeks, mostly due to health concerns. We are all healthy now, or at least on…
John Fleming Wheeler arrived in Mendocino City in the summer of 1878. He set up a dentist office within the Norton Hotel on Main Street. For a short while previously he had practiced dentistry in…
It was Halloween inching toward the witching hour of midnight, as two young women navigated the dark and winding Highway 128 through Anderson Valley. As their car lights illuminated the black asphalt before them, they…