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Posts published in “Essays”

My Travels With Wes, VI (The Last Ride?)

This “last ride” actually occurred a couple of weeks ago during our voyage from Josie Brusa’s home on the old Deadmeades winery property back to Boonville via the Walter Prather home visit and stop by…

The Salton Sump & The Virtual Sea

The Salton Sea, its glory days long gone, is now a 35-mile- long growing hazard to public health for miles around, a mortal danger to the water fowl migrating on the Pacific Flyway, death to…

You Should Live So Long

People, places and things we can do without: Bars that don't have a back mirror. When you're having a drink alone (hi there) it's nice to have a familiar face to stare at, even your…

Handel’s Royal Banquet

(I’ll be playing an organ recital next Sunday, March 5th at 4:00p.m. at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. In another bit of shameless PR for…

L.A. Woman

L. A. Woman... L.A. Woman…” by the Doors of course. Goin’ down there from Sacramento to where they created the L. A. album — 8512 Santa Monica Blvd — during my yearly trip to L.A.…

Millionaire Publisher Declares He’s Broke (1974)

On the night before the Thanksgiving of 1964 I was comfortably seated in the neo-Edwardian lobby of the Algonquin Hotel in New York City having a drink with Ramparts Magazine publisher Edward Keating. The occasion…

Death By Bureaucracy

Mendocino County’s marijuana industry was started by curious hippies, all with a tinge of the outlaw, and grew and flourished through the years despite the real possibility of arrest, imprisonment, ripoffs, crop failures and more. …

Ancient Totems

For thousands of years, Mendocino County history was memorialized in spirit rocks like the giant granite message board at the headwaters of Feliz Creek, and another near Cloverdale on the Russian River. All are federally…

Snow Days

There is a learning curve with snow. I discovered this fact recently when I awakened in my Philo cabin up on the ridge to a sparkling white winter wonderland dusted with snow. I got up…

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