I know James Taylor has seen fire and rain. I have heard him sing about them. Bully for him. I, too, have seen fire and rain, lived with them and nearly died from them. I…
Posts published in “Essays”
Way back when I was a free-range kid in coastal Southern California, there was a decent-sized freshwater pond about a twenty-minute walk through the barbed-wire fence and up into the hills behind our street. Whether…
It was a time when everybody in the neighborhood trusted everybody else. I mean that my parents and Dave’s parents trusted each other with their kids; even though our parents rarely spoke to each other.…
Is there a city in California, other than Ukiah, so eager to wipe out its history and destroy architecturally significant buildings? Why does Ukiah have a near spotless record of bulldozing and/or setting fire to…
“The power of the dog is all those urges, all those deep, uncontrollable urges that can come and destroy us.” – Jane Campion, director, screenwriter What’s a “western”? Moviegoers and film critics have been asking…
At well over two hours running time, Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up (streaming on Netflix) isn’t exactly a bagatelle, but it mostly retains its satiric lightness and goes by quickly. A holiday film about the…
Mushroom foraging was something the nineteenth century European immigrants, Italians, Germans, Swiss and French brought to the United States and to Anderson Valley. When I first moved here, I heard stories about the old-timer Italians…