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…
Posts published in “Essays”
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…
Absent much of the past couple years, I too late realized I’d never taken full advantage of employment opportunities while in Mendocino County. The mistake was trying to fit my squaresville employment existence into the…
On a leafy street in a leafy village on leafy Long island there was a local volunteer firefighter’s firehouse, as orderly as the military. Us kids knew some of the volunteers from our neighborhood. We’d…
Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday, March 21st, falls on the first full day of spring, if one calculates that date by mercilessly quartering the calendar. The chronological coincidence is a fitting one: though Vivaldi gets all…
I hadn’t ever heard “feedback,” in a musical sense, before, but the howling that kick-started the Beatles’ ‘I Feel Fine’ was an instant hit with me. This was long ago. You needed to snap molded…
Olompali, translated from the Miwok as “southern people” or “southern village,” lies just north of Novato, directly off Highway 101. It’s a state park these days but goes way back as the site of a…