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…
Posts published in “Essays”
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.
Buzzards swoop on the wind drafts in the draw that extends from below my house to the bottom lands next to the remains of Uncle Charlie’s cabin. The same wind currents that provide the swirling,…