Slim, bespectacled Jean Jacques Brun was pouring a modernly designed 2009 Brun Avril magnum that was cork tainted — i.e. smelled of bleach. I was his first taster of the afternoon and he eyeballed my…
Posts published in “Essays”
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” That line from John Ford’s film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance proves apt for tales of the Old West time and again. The shootout between feuding…
Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, is back in the news in an article in today’s Sacramento Bee about the increase in steam injection oil drilling permits since Governor Jerry Brown…
“Humor is just another defense against the universe.” — Mel Brooks Once upon a time, so many years ago it might have been another lifetime, I got two kittens, a boy and girl, and after…
Chen Guangchen, the Chinese human rights activist, got four separate articles in the New York Times for May 5. Jane Perlez and Michael Wines reported from Beijing on the deal that would get Chen and…
For ten years, Abe Schoener has been recording the unfolding history of California’s climate and geology — but he is not a government scientist drawing sedimentary core samples from the Earth or a hydrologist taking…
If it bleeds it leads. Mendocino County has never been a stranger to senseless bloodletting. In the broader spectrum of history the tragic deaths of Jere Melo and Matthew Coleman last summer were merely another…