Let's begin with some Q&A. In the 1990s, runaway cultivation of a mind-altering cash crop led to a spate of illegal surface water diversions from the streams and springs that feed the Russian River, as…
Posts published in “Essays”
“This is the point of decision,” a dear friend often says, in our deepest conversations. And, isn’t it always points or places in time that cycle over and over in our spirals of regret? That…
There's no way to really tell how much Colorado's recent population surge has to do with legalized cannabis. But some locals see a connection. One of the lead articles in the May 31 Denver Post…
There are scourges, and then there are scourges. Dutch elm disease, the Golden Horde, AIDS, potato blight, Spanish flu, Japanese beetles, Nazism, Maroon 5, war, and the conquistadors have all done exemplary work in erasing…
The waiters and waitress at my favorite pizza place in Santa Rosa wear T-shirts that say, “Support Local Produce.” The menu repeats that slogan; it also appears in big letters on a wall for one…
The Warriors' great Klay Thompson pumped as if to shoot. Trevor Ariza (6' 7", 225 lbs) leaped to block the shot, but Thompson stayed bent down instead of rising up and Ariza's left knee clipped…
The Mendocino Film Festival took place these past two weekends and the little town was jumping with out-of-towners, some in the movie business, some wanting to be in the movie business, and some who enjoy watching movies on screens larger than postcards and wall calendars. Endemic rural funk collided with visiting urban slick, and being highly susceptible to ambivalent ambience, I avoided the commercial sector of town for most of the days the film festival was underway.
When Billie Holiday, whose real name was Eleonora, was born on April 7, 1915, her mother was 13 years old, and her father was still a kid in short pants who kicked cans down the street. It happened in Baltimore, a city then famous for its rats. Her mother split for New York where she scrubbed stairs; her father joined a jazz band and disappeared.
Timber fallers can be heard less than a mile north and slightly west of here. I walked through their handiwork last evening, a far neater job than I've witnessed on the lands of the predominant…