In February, 1874, blue-eyed, brown haired Helmuth Seefeldt was born in Demmin, on the West Pomeranian plain of northeastern Germany at the confluence of three rivers. Little is known about his childhood there or his…
Posts published in “Essays”
Fifty years ago, there were ongoing clashes between rebellious longhaired youth and law enforcement. In Mendocino County, it would play out in peculiar fashion, resulting in Mendocino County's oldest homicide cold case. In May 1967,…
Luxury is a relative concept and any particular person’s idea of it is directly associated with his or her personal circumstances, regardless of the common images we may share when hearing the word of limos…
“When pigs fly,” is a centuries old adynaton, insinuating the obvious impossibility of a statement. However, pigs have flown. The first pig to fly was actually a piglet, proving once again that the youth of…
The Times' CIA correspondent David Sanger reported Oct. 7 that Gen. William Westmoreland had requested "tactical" nuclear weapons to be shipped to Vietnam in February, 1968 for use in the event that US troops were…
My curiosity finally got the best of me. After reading Comptche resident Jerry Philbrick’s almost weekly letters to the AVA I just had to meet him. How many people around here sign their letters with…
On a fine Fort Bragg autumn morning, the very day of the Mendocino Coast District Hospital Board of Directors candidates forum at the senior center, I swung by the hospital to ask for the budget.…
William Held and Dr. Case, of Ukiah, were riding northbound in a buggy on an early December evening, destination Centerville in the Potter Valley district. Their horses shied as a light flared from the darkness.…
It was standing room only at the Fort Bragg Senior Center on October 1. The League of Women Voters (LWV) hosted a meet and greet for the seven candidates running for one of the four…