There are few things in life worse than your next door neighbor hating you, and you hating him. It's not just a one day thing, it's every day. Whenever they drive by you have to…
Posts published in “Essays”
While not falling into the “Lost Cause” category, attending a County Planning Commission meeting when you KNOW your side is going to lose, eats up a day and leaves you disappointed. I have nothing but…
In what’s becoming an annual tradition the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino is hosting a book sale of history books Saturday May 25 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the west porch. Book donations…
In the 1930s Sinclair Oil’s advertising execs and assorted flaks put their heads together to create a company logo. As the story goes, at the time the New York-based corporation’s oils and lubricants were refined…
The fabled Reggae on the River festival has been through more trials and tribulations than your average 30-something native Californian, with a real rough patch in recent years due to disorganization, in-fighting, and financial struggles.…
Think of the 1950s and it’s hard not to think of the bomb, blonde bombshells like Marilyn Monroe, Beat Generation writers and that all-American ogre, Senator Joseph McCarthy who burned himself up and burned out…
In 1968, five years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing women the right to legal abortions (ironically also the year that Pope Paul VI declared his opposition to birth control pills),…
Yesterday I went to the San Francisco Department of Motor Vehicles, armed with all ID, to renew my driver's license. The female robo voice called my number and summoned me to "Window Number 21," staffed…
By November of 1770 the English organist, traveler, and man of letters, Charles Burney had been on the road for five months, touring the Continent doing research for his General History of Music; the first of…