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Posts published in “Essays”

A Huge Success!

Our benefit last Sunday, August 3rd, for Mark and Charlie, was a huge success! Both Charlie Paget-Seekins and Mark Pitner and their friends and families want to express their gratitude and extend a big thank…

What’s Under The Lake?

As drought lowers the levels of man made reservoirs all over California amazing things have been popping up in the dry lakebeds. At Folsom Lake the remains of the settlements at Salmon Falls and Mormon…

Nuthin’ But Sunshine

Last week I described how the Albion River had gone dry at the confluence of its two main branches. Well, in the last few days I've walked west from the Macdonald Ranch, and sadly I…

The Priest & The Prisoner

I was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood on June 16, 1950 in St Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Shortly afterwards I was appointed as an Assistant Pastor at St…

Queen Anne’s Death & The Life of Zadok

You might think that nothing is more British than young Prince George, the toddler who recently turned one and whose birth has plagued tabloids and televisions with such smiley aplomb ever since. It’s not his…

Local Folks, Part 2

As promised in my previous article, here are descriptions of a few more local folks as I remember them during my time in Anderson Valley from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Jack Clow…

Food Action Plan

Mendocino County has always been a food-producing region. For thousands of years, Native Peoples organized their travels and daily activities to take advantage of the availability of seasonal foods.

Lost Coast Ramble

We approach the twentieth anniversary of the wilderness trek of the two greatest radical journalists of our time: the late Alexander Cockburn and Bruce Anderson, editor and publisher of America’s Last Newspaper—Anderson Valley Advertiser. In…

Failure

Last night I attended the Mendocino Music Festival’s third orchestral concert of this year’s festival, my wife a cellist in the most excellent orchestra. The second half of the program was Symphony No. 2 in E minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff, a massive work that lasted more than an hour. The third movement of the four-movement symphony was especially moving to me—the glorious music swamping my psyche and catalyzing several epiphanies about the novel I’m currently writing.

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