The recent death of Walter Mondale brings back strong memories for me, back to when I and many other Mendocino County residents had a first-hand face to face meeting with the late Vice President Walter…
Posts published in “Essays”
Know what an Ichthyosaur is? Imagine 225 million years ago a swimming dinosaur about the size of a city bus. Traveling to central Nevada to see the fossils of this creature has been on the…
Yesterday, September 9, 2020 smoke and ashes from the nearby wildfires blocked out the sun and settled on the graves and gravestones in the local cemeteries. The ash covered everything: cars, yards, decks, and the…
Previously, I described how a small sawmill from the Timber Boom Days after World War II operated and my first week on the job at Philo Lumber doing production work. My recollection of the first…
Like a bird on a wire Like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free — Leonard Cohen Caron McCloud flew peacefully and powerfully into her future at…
Alexander Cockburn, in a piece he recycled for publication the year he died, wrote that he “learned to loathe Animal Farm” while at prep school because “any arguments for socialism would be met with brays of…
That morning following the shootout at Rattlesnake Creek, Doc and Andy Bowman found the tracks of their prey's mounts on the hill to the east. They had gone but a quarter mile farther on the…
In 1918, the world experienced a pandemic caused by a particularly virulent strain of the influenza A virus. Over the course of two years, it went around the world in four big waves, then faded. …
Anytime I get mail from the government I consider it important and a little threatening. So, the latest mail is from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This is my reply to Mr. Russell D.…