I’d been to Mexico eight, maybe nine times, not counting border towns; spots like Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Zihuatenejo, Oaxaca, and Cancun. I had seen the sprawling Federal District, Ciudad de Mexico, itself, only once, for…
Posts published in “Essays”
In 1942 Donald finished seventh grade at Navarro’s Laurel School, and began middle school, 7th to 9th grades, at Boonville’s Con Creek School, today the Anderson Valley Historical Society museum. The bus ride from Navarro up to…
I remember the county jail when it was on the top floor of the courthouse, and I was on hand to watch the then-new jail installed out on Low Gap Road. Now, surprise surprise, our…
Cesar Chavez's Birthday was Thursday, March 31st. As we remember the crucial movement Chavez launched, we remind persons interested in Chavez and the UFW that the best book on Chavez is Frank Bardacke's Cesar Chavez…
I spent several summers on my grandfather’s berry farm in the Skagit Valley sixty miles north of Seattle. To irrigate his water-hungry crops, he had drilled a well in the 1950s. The water was conducted…
While I have written extensively about local history in Mendocino County there is another kind of history I enjoy delving into. Call it culinary history. I enjoy delving into what we eat, how we prepare…
Eons ago, in something like the mid-to-late 1990s, there was a period where there was no official place to get a hot dinner out in our little coastal Marin town. The local cafe hadn’t opened…
One drizzly afternoon last week I sat around his dining room table with Donald Pardini and son Ernie and listened to Don’s recollections of his early childhood in post-milltown Navarro. What stories and what power…
Even in his own obituary, John Jenrette had to yield the spotlight to lovely Rita, his devoted wife from long ago. The Times’ account began, “John Jenrette Jr., a charismatic Democratic Representative from South Carolina who…