I was introduced to Guenoc Ranch in the late 1960s. I was selling fertilizer and Guenoc Ranch would use a large amount of fertilizer on its reported 19,000 acres of pasture and rangeland. I remember…
Posts published in “Essays”
We step back from the disorders and idiocies of the moment to wish Bob Dylan a happy 80th birthday. He entered the scene in a previous moment of national disorder, the Sixties, as we call…
I was born in 1970. That makes me a textbook Generation X poster boy. My parents were honeymooning in Italy during Apollo XI’s landing on the Moon. I was born during the time Sticky Fingers…
A drifting skiff and an attentive night watchman kicked off one of Mendocino County’s strangest maritime mysteries one quiet afternoon in 1921. Around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, November 13th, had you been looking out to…
Unlike the days following Osama bin Laden’s death on May 2nd, 2011, the tenth anniversary of his killing passed without hoopla in the American Homeland. A decade on from death of America’s arch enemy, no…
Ukiah was among California cities hardest hit by the pottery craze of the 1970s. Ukiah suffered crippling waves of pottery fevers until they lessened and broke circa 1985. Smaller, less toxic crafts-borne plagues were reported…
No culture in the Sun? In France not long ago, a French professor of literature wore a bemused expression when I told him that California was my home, though I was teaching American literature in…
1. Some say that Jews asserting their "Right to Resign" are "self-hating." Others think resigning is the height of humanism. And cynics suspect the RtR phenomenon is a money-making scheme. It started soon after a…
In the last episode of the House of Morgan saga I described my millworker career from the humble Point job up to the celebratory Greenchain #4 puller position working next to “Highload” Hurst. This week…