In my childhood, I was surrounded by evidence that there was something very important going on. Down half a block and around the corner a…
Posts published in “Essays”
Peg Melnik wrote an excellent article on the Barron Herzog Wines several weeks ago in the Press Democrat. She included some of the history of…
It was the last hours of 1999. Lots of people who should know better had predicted that the world would end at midnight. The computers…
OK, here’s your civics quiz for the week. Who said the following? “It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require…
Now’s the time of year we bore readers with New Year Resolutions, in which talent-free columnists promise to lose weight, learn a foreign language, volunteer…
With the local timber industry ever waning in Mendocino County it’s educational to look back and see what a role logging railroads and lumber mills…
World War II hit Baghdad by the Bay like a ton of block busters. Overnight the self-contained, self-satisfied city whose population had stood absolutely still…
I have seen the future of footgear, and its name is Hey Dude. Despite the improbable brand label, Hey Dude shoes will soon sweep the…
Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘A Christmas Ghost-Story’ was published in the England’s Westminster Gazette in December 1899, two months after the start of the Second Anglo-Boer…
It’s a hot quiet weekday morning in Falls City, Oregon, which is more of a town than a city, at least by the standards of…
Forget the Christmas tree and Saint Nic’s suit, it is music that marks Germany’s greatest contributions to the holiday. Aside from any number of carols,…