The second annual National Heirloom Exhibition last week in Santa Rosa was much expanded from the inaugural event the prior year. In 2011 organizers managed to fill out the Sonoma County Fairground's cavernous Grace Pavilion…
Posts published in “Essays”
At last Friday's Coastal Commission meeting in Caspar, California, Deputy Director Alison Dettmer delivered a bombshell. She announced that seismic testing plans for the controversial Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant are not the only high-energy…
Fifteen years ago a South African music enthusiast established aweb site that he called “The Great Rodriguez Hunt.” Rodriquez was an obscure singer/songwriter from the Detroit area whose two albums disappeared into the dustbin of…
Marcia and I are moving from this house we’ve rented for the past seven years into a house (five miles away) we just bought. Miracle of miracles, the little gem came to us as if…
When the salmon bite turns off, local anglers have traditionally turned to halibut and striped bass fishing to keep their rods bent. The 2008 and 2009 seasons were prime examples — -years when the salmon…
A senior female paused to look at the AVA shirts we were selling, reading out loud to herself, “Fanning the Flames of Discontent.” Then she asked, “What am I supposed to be discontented with?” A…
Spotting an acquaintance in an airport can be unsettling. Should you say hello or disappear wordlessly down the concourse? It’s especially awkward when you spot that friend lurking among the smut section in a bookstore/giftshop…
Why, a reader might ask, would a perfectly sensible woman old enough for Social Security allow herself to leave the peace and quiet of Comptche for a trip into the inhospitable middle of no place…
The tradition of a fair goes back to Roman times, when the authorities would declare an intermission of labor and tradesmen from afar sold their wares. In the Middle Ages, fairs were tied to religious…