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Posts published in “Essays”

Pebbles Trippet’s Oklahoma Roots

Albion's Pebbles Trippet  grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As our nation is now acknowledging, in 1921 the prosperous Black section of Tulsa, Greenwood, was utterly destroyed by the White Citizens backed by Law Enforcement. I asked our…

Don Shanley (Interview by Steve Sparks)

(Ed note: We are reprinting this 2009 Steve Sparks interview of Don Shanley, a long-time resident of the Anderson Valley who survived, just barely, some of the most intense combat in Vietnam.) * * *…

Lillie Langtry, Orville Magoon & Bob

I was introduced to Guenoc Ranch in the late 1960s. I was selling fertilizer and Guenoc Ranch would use a large amount of fertilizer on its reported 19,000 acres of pasture and rangeland. I remember…

Happy Birthday

We step back from the disorders and idiocies of the moment to wish Bob Dylan a happy 80th birthday. He entered the scene in a previous moment of national disorder, the Sixties, as we call…

Lake County Gen-Xer Apologizes

I was born in 1970. That makes me a textbook Generation X poster boy. My parents were honeymooning in Italy during Apollo XI’s landing on the Moon. I was born during the time Sticky Fingers…

Mystery Launch in Mendo Bay

A drifting skiff and an attentive night watchman kicked off one of Mendocino County’s strangest maritime mysteries one quiet afternoon in 1921. Around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, November 13th, had you been looking out to…

Gone But Not Forgotten — By Pop

Unlike the days following Osama bin Laden’s death on May 2nd, 2011, the tenth anniversary of his killing passed without hoopla in the American Homeland. A decade on from death of America’s arch enemy, no…

A Place to Throw a Pot, and Up

Ukiah was among California cities hardest hit by the pottery craze of the 1970s.  Ukiah suffered crippling waves of pottery fevers until they lessened and broke circa 1985. Smaller, less toxic crafts-borne plagues were reported…

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