Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Essays”

Rich People Have Problems, Too

Women tend to resent paying alimony and it can hurt a man’s pride to receive it, according to an October 30 piece in The Times. The first example is singer Kelly Clarkson, who has to pay…

Hiking the Mendocino Coast

Let's talk pedology. A dirty topic indeed. The word derives from the Greek pedon, meaning soil, and logos, meaning study. Pedology is the study of soil. What did  your first glance mislead you to think?…

Founding Father of American Song

Less than a month before the first presidential election of December 1788, Francis Hopkinson published his Seven Songs for the Harpsichord or Forte Piano, dedicating the set “To His Excellency George Washington, Esquire.” Hopkinson was a Philadelphia…

Laytonville Memories

Hello Mr. Anderson & Mr. Livermore, That was some article about Indiana Slim’s Red Hots band and the legendary Piano Jimmy. A pair of fascinating and completely opposite memories from those days. Whoever wrote that…

Another Fiasco in Berkeley

The shit is hitting the fan in Berkeley, again. The city, which is notorious for not thinking clearly or honorably about People’s Park and its legacy, announced plans recently to install a public toilet on…

Flipped a Coin, Moved 3,000 Miles

So I semi-temporarily left Ukiah for a town even more dismal, and live on a street with traffic worse than North Dora.  Historically I have done my important planning, as in finding a new home,…

Pigs ‘R’ Us

Pigs could become a source of replacement organs for human beings in the not-too-distant future (assuming there is one). In September surgeons at New York University’s Langone Transplant Institute attached a pig’s kidney to a…

Doc Standley and the Eel River Fishermen

The career of Jeremiah (Doc) Standley, the noted Mendocino County lawman in days of yore, took many a twist and turn in the year 1892. Some of those winding paths started without Doc present and…

-