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Posts published in “Essays”

Opening Day

Another baseball season begins with nobody, including myself, expecting much of our Minnesota Twins. The satellite dish company sends a nice letter every three days urging me to hook the dish back up for a…

Finishing Things

In his famous essay on parenting, Punishment Versus Discipline, Bruno Bettelheim wrote that children do what their parents do, not what their parents say to do. My father, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, was a big fan of Bettelheim, but he did not heed Bruno’s advice in rearing my siblings and me.

Cars, Trucks & Tractors

Pretty much like today, those – like me – who lived in Anderson Valley from the 1950s through the 1980s depended on cars to get around, pickup trucks to handle hauling (except for logs, lumber…

That Other Drought

The recent drought in Northern California made me think of the last one back in the mid-seventies when I was living about six miles up Sherwood Road on a friend’s 20-acre property without electricity or…

Early Mendocino County

As opposed to Robert Frost's two roads diverging in a wood, it is often the convergence of two paths that proves just as unexpected and consequential. I have spent the last weeks of winter and…

Farm To Farm

Country inhabitants of the Ohio river valley have endured the most arduous winter in memory, at least for people 77 years and younger. While the blizzard of '77 lingers on in family photo albums, with…

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