(February, 1965) — To John Gschwend belongs the honor of constructing the pioneer sawmill in the Anderson Valley township. He built the first sawmill in Anderson Valley in 1856. At that time there were no…
Posts published in “Essays”
The barren summit of Yosemite's Half Dome is 8,836 feet above sea level, more than 4,700 feet higher than Yosemite Valley directly below. In 1868 Josiah Whitney, the noted geologist for whom the highest peak…
While reading Peter Roderick’s account of the dismantling of Britain’s National Health Service in the latest issue of the London Review of Books, I put on the relevant Bach cantata. Bach has many lessons to…
Last night Marcia and I watched Seymour: An Introduction, a documentary about the pianist and piano teacher Seymour Bernstein, who was eighty-five at the time the film was made and is eighty-eight today. The film, directed by Ethan Hawke, the actor, is certainly about classical music and pianos and playing the piano, but the movie is also a fascinating and ever-surprising portrait of an extremely thoughtful person with an extraordinary talent for teaching.
We've all suffered to some degree, have we not? We all have our share of pain and misery and loss in our stories, some to greater and others to a lesser degree. A common error…
One of the men who helped make Jim Jones and The People’s Temple a powerhouse in the 1970s and then turned against him just before Jones killed more than 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana, has…
There's an old sad saying that "marijuana does cause insanity - but only in politicians." Alas, the same holds true for guns. President Obama, spurred by America's latest mass shooting, delivered a "rare Oval Office…