I arrive at the little nursing home to visit Berna. In the foyer is a TV. Three old women, two in wheelchairs and one propped up on a gurney, are watching, but they turn hungry…
Posts published in “Essays”
Standing on stage in front of thousands of people can be a kind of out-of-body experience, especially if one is essentially shy in public. But on the big stage at the Sierra Nevada World Music…
2008: I'm driving a stolen car. Not technically stolen, but it feels stolen. My guilty conscience clatters along everywhere I go in the car, like the tin cans and old shoes honeymoon-bound brides and grooms…
Public anger over judge and jury decisions is as old as the creation of the three branches of American government. Fortunately we haven’t yet reached the state of some countries where judges are gunned down…
An Albion area resident has paid a $2,900 deposit to the Mendocino County Clerk's Office to start a recount on Measure C, the $144 per parcel tax that would fund Mendocino Coast District Hospital (MCDH).…
Fourth of July. The very words sizzle like a hot dog on a griddle, and as long as you’re up, I’ll have one, easy on the relish. Oh, and an ice-cold beer, pronounced “a nice…
Echos and murmurs of the deliberations of government come down to us in bits and pieces. We trust our elected representatives to guard our interests and protect us from the arbitrary abuse of power. We…
When Mendocino County Sheriff Jeremiah “Doc” Standley arrested twenty-two year old Joseph McKay at the Burns Hotel of Santa Rosa in late November, 1891, it would have been reasonable for the lawman to assume his…
When I first reached the age of reason and started considering possible career paths, and having abandoned my childhood ambitions of becoming a tiger or a candy manufacturer, I set my sights on two possibilities:…