Even though the nights have been quieter, I have been dreaming more vividly. Across the self-isolated populace there are reports of widespread nightmares—stress, fear, change of routine cited as likely causes. Maybe the lack of…
Posts published in “Essays”
Berkeley, CA – May 4, 2020 “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.” Thus spoke then California Governor Ronald Reagan to a 1970 farm owner’s convention in Yosemite. He was talking about…
Spring is popping now with a ferocious energy that can only remind the sullenly sequestered masses that life is going on without them. Every living thing is busy making-and-doing out there, except the poor humans, idled…
These days, citizen journalists are almost everywhere reporting on the ebb and flow of the virus, from Seattle and San Francisco to Chicago and New York
White men first set eyes on Round Valley on an April day. Promptly they killed a couple score of the people who had been living there for who knows how long. Round Valley, where grass…
There is nothing more frustrating to a local historian than finding an artifact and not being able to figure where the heck it came from, or when! The Held-Poage Library of the Mendocino County Historical…
Canyon Road is just North of Geyserville. I had been contacted by an owner of a small older vineyard to inspect the vines for disease or insects. It turned out to be a typical older…
Berkeley, CA 4/27/2020 — In 1921, at the age of 39, Franklin Delano Roosevelt felt ill one night after dinner. He went to bed, but woke up the next morning drenched in sweat, weak, and…
Anderson Valley was rather unique in northern California, for while it was bordered on the east by three Mexican land grants and on the west by two land grants, it had been overlooked. It only…