My name is Brett McFarland. I was born to Mike and Gayle McFarland on October 28th, 1984 in Sioux Falls SD. My father was a high ranking officer in the United States Army and my mother worked nights as a pediatrics intensive care unit nurse.
Posts published in “Essays”
One of the old-time industries in Anderson Valley and the North Coast was peeling and shipping of tan bark. It was a big thing in…
This April puts us five years short of the 300th anniversary of the publication of Robinson Crusoe. Daniel Defoe's popular novel about an island castaway…
I met Peter Matthiessen once when the Friends of the Library were selling books at the Koret Auditorium in 2001. Matthiessen was featured speaker at…
We can't see the city of Decatur from inside this prison, but at 9:30pm, we hear the city's sirens wailing in the distance, alarms that signal the worst disasters: floods, fires, plagues of locusts, nuclear attacks, and, of course, tornadoes.
A “Second Chance,” after 25 years of absence and silence, was recently offered Shepherd by Assumpta. Her email arrived from Europe to his farm. We met in Barcelona in 1988 and have had no contact during the last quarter of a century. I answered her email within 15 minutes of its sending, without thinking, but with a deep feeling of connection.
I walk to town most every day rather than drive my truck for the same reason I decided in 1967 to create a life for myself independent of automobiles, something I’ve managed to do for most of the last forty-seven years.
On Thursday, February 14th— Valentine’s Day, about three weeks after my article, “El Úndecimo Mandamiento” appeared in The Anderson Valley Advertiser, Samantha called. It was…
After digging out of the Big Snow of ’75 I checked in at the Mendocino County unemployment office in Ukiah because my six months of…
Dear Dr. Zack, Please help me settle an argument with my girlfriend. We agree that the two sure signs of life are irritability and the…
“Writer’s block” - A euphemism for having nothing to say. It happens. But I was thinking about a piece on Freedom and Liberty, a couple…