If someone handed you a map of California with the 58 counties outlined and a list of their names could you put the right name within the right boundary? I couldn’t and I’m a historian.…
Posts published in “Essays”
In 2009, you may recall the nation underwent a severe economic downturn -- a consequence, I gather, of Jesus expressing his displeasure at the American people electing a Muslim president and Stony Lonesome Inc. did…
We just watched the movie Wild based on a memoir by a woman, played in the movie by Reese Witherspoon, who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail through California and Oregon to overcome her anger and sorrow about her mother’s death, and to end her addiction to heroin and frequent rough sex with nasty strangers. If ever a movie was made to convince people, especially women, never to go backpacking, this is that movie. From the beginning of her hike until the finish, a terrified Witherspoon runs a gauntlet of small-brained rapist alcoholics, though before she hit the trail she couldn’t get enough of those guys. If you enjoy stilted dialogue, confusing flashbacks, uninspiring views of wilderness, and a cute woman groaning as she hikes and flees from small-brained rapist alcoholics, you’ll love this movie.
At present, we find ourselves in Sicily, but not the Sicily so popularized by the movie, The Godfather. One is cautioned, to be sure, never to speak of “those who have no name.” Rather, we…
This is an addendum to the recently published history of Allied Grape Growers, 1951-2011 celebrating the 60-year history of the grape growing cooperative. My family grew grapes in Hopland, Mendocino County, and delivered the grapes…
Will has been making and teaching music around Mendocino and Lake counties for many years. He and his various band ensembles can play blues and rock one night out in Upper Lake; then bluegrass…
I've always been a sucker for music. I don't mean that I love it, although I do; I mean I'm susceptible in the extreme to the power of music to sway, influence, manipulate and take…
It's a dramatic, shocking and violent film. Some 200 uniformed policemen armed with billy clubs, revolvers and tear gas angrily charge an unarmed crowd of several hundred striking steelworkers and their wives and children who…
Anderson Valley has five cemeteries, though only four are in general use. All are old, all are still active, all have rustic character befitting the valley – no manicured lawns here — and all abound with historic family names, many that still had a strong presence in the valley during the years of my youth there in the late 1950s and 1960s. A few of those families remain in the valley today, others have passed on or moved on. Still, the cemeteries are snapshots of the valley, past and present.