One of my favorite discoveries studying history is how creativity and ingenuity solved problems, like moving really BIG things. Incline railways were one such invention. These rail lines had nicknames for their many parts—they were…
Posts published in “Essays”
Somewhere in my mother’s photo albums is a picture taken by my father of the teenage me standing on a viewing platform above the Dry Coulee Dam in central Washington State. Behind me, like a…
July, 1900, evolved into a hot, dry month in Northern California. As thirty-eight-year-old J.E. King and his wife left their small Skaggs Springs ranch they had little idea the season would turn deadly. They traveled…
Hope. With recent events including strife and illness making the headlines in America, hope is something that has been scarce in my life recently, as I am sure it is scarce in many people’s lives…
I wonder how many isolated rural milltowns there were in California when the Wendling mill started production in 1907. I say dozens, perhaps hundreds along the redwood belt alone. Think of Aptos and the Santa…
From early 1987 and for about the next 10 years I was employed at a small law office in downtown Oakland. The office consisted of two bright, hardworking attorneys and me. I was the office…
The Lockdown has sparked a renaissance in correspondence. I’ve been exchanging postcards with my mother and letters with my youngest nephew. Emails have gotten longer, more interesting, more personal, more fun. I’m not on FaceBook…
From the headlines: “Ailing Nations Push to Reopen, Accepting More Illness as the Price to Pay” “Despite Growth in Cases, Easily Distracted Washington Moves On” “Fed Chair Sees Years of Economic Woes” “Heaps of Complaints,…
(Before we get rolling here, I’m going to ask that you imagine, before reading the first line of this little time-waster, it coming from the mouth of Dr. Nick Riviera. If you don’t know who…