I was a pushover. I met Rocky on a sizzling Fourth of July weekend. I never intended to take him home with me. He was sprawled under a park bench on South Beach trying to…
Posts published in “Essays”
Beginning with Disney’s first animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs of 1937, the Mouse House’s message has always been about family. That laser beam focus makes for heartwarming storytelling but, more importantly,…
The next thing they’ll do is repaint all those bulbout curbs black so the hundreds of tires that rub against them daily won’t leave telltale marks. After that, they’ll block State Street off from vehicles…
Forty years ago Eileen Pronsolino co-wrote a brief history of the earliest wine grape growers in Anderson Valley. At the time she was working at Al Green’s Greenwood Ridge Vineyard tasting room on Highway 128,…
King Salmon. Delicious. California King Salmon, that is. In the nineteen sixties and seventies, it was priced a little bit more than hamburger. It was a staple on family plates. During World War One, canned King…
The most influential promoters of California's messed-up cannabis "legalization" scheme (they are often IDed as "thought leader" or "visionary" when speaking at conferences) are now its most vocal critics. None are expressing any self-criticism. The…
The last time marijuana did me a favor was when I went to see the Grateful Dead along with 30,000 other smelly hippies and, just as the show was about to start, realized I’d left…
I know James Taylor has seen fire and rain. I have heard him sing about them. Bully for him. I, too, have seen fire and rain, lived with them and nearly died from them. I…
Way back when I was a free-range kid in coastal Southern California, there was a decent-sized freshwater pond about a twenty-minute walk through the barbed-wire fence and up into the hills behind our street. Whether…