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Posts published in “from the archives…”

Trying Times

My pets tend to live a long time. That’s the good news and the bad news. The good news is that a long life usually is a sign of a well-lived life. The bad news…

Bad Snakes and Red-Headed Women

Anderson Valley High School’s head football coach for the past 13 years has been Dan Kuny. His mother was a red-headed Arkie woman who died much too young from cancer. She was a vivid lady…

Housesitting in the U.S.A.

There was a quote in the AVA recently about suburbs being breeding grounds for boredom and apathy, among other social ills. We might add to the list suspicion, isolation, and despair. I’m in the second…

Anderson Valley in the 1950s

When I was about eight years old and living at Brown's Mill Camp, I kept begging my parents for a bicycle for my Christmas present. They told me they couldn't afford such an expensive present.…

The Decay of Letters: Leg-Humping with Tom Wolfe

Someone made the odd, maybe malicious, certainly rash decision to put Tom Wolfe on the right hand side of Harper’s 150th anniversary cover, facing Mark Twain, a leonine, earthy, dignified old devil, sitting in alert…

Spring Loaded

Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, one cannot help but to think of Jesse Jackson. Not the Jesse Jackson of hymietown fame, nor the Jesse Jackson of the stifling, impotent Democratic Party who likes to…

When a Winery Kills

Behind the serene vistas of the Northcoast's wine country exists a highly mechanized, chemically-dependent, industrial production process as hazardous to the people who make wine as any West Virginia coal mine is to the men…

Stella

A very big rig truck pulls up in front of a very small Boonville store every Thursday morning about 11. The truck and trailer are a lot bigger than the store. The driver of this…

Anatomy of a 49er Look-See

As I wrote in the March 15 paper, this reporter and Logger Head Coach Jerry Philbrick and Logger defensive coordinator Dan Kuny had phoned our beloved SF 49ers in an attempt to get the pro…

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