I have now lived in Mendocino for ten years, nine of those partnered with Marcia. Our little town gets flack for being a tourist trap, and there is no question that tourism and cannabis fuel the local economic engine, but so do carpentry, plumbing, school teaching, real estate, dentistry, nursing, doctoring, selling groceries, photocopying, and writing speculative fiction to name a few of the many things humans do hereabouts to make money.
Posts published in “Essays”
Talking about politics is not something I enjoy much, and we know all too well there is more than enough commentary everywhere on the absurd Republican candidates and TV debates. But I may have two…
Praise the sweet Lord, spring training has rolled around once more. As George Carlin once said, “Baseball is different from any other sport. In most sports the ball or object, is put in play by…
My friend Barbara Yaley died yesterday morning. The news was delivered by a close mutual friend and it came as a shock from which I’m still reeling. Three weeks ago Barbara was diagnosed with an…
Of course, I don't remember my first breath, but my first conscious breath came when I experienced childbirth for the first time. The Lamaze Method of giving birth taught a type of breathing that was…
Snow flurries blow through our region these days, breezes gusting from the northwest. Most folks complain about the winter weather, but the writer in me savors this time of year. I loaf without guilt and…
Former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders gave one of two keynote talks at the International Cannabis Business Conference in San Francisco last weekend. Dr. Elders had been fired by Bill Clinton after acknowledging to the American…
"I hope you're writing some of this down," she said, gathering her books and hopefully her wits before I swept her off to class. On the way to campus we stopped in a long column…
I've been having some trouble sleeping lately. The pattern goes as follows: I fall easily and deeply asleep at about 10:30 and then pop fully awake at about 2:45 — the dark one — thence…