Bridgewater, Massachusetts, February 28, 2021 – At the end of February, I went to Gillette Stadium about 20 miles west of home in Bridgewater, Massachussetts, and got my vaccination, first round. Sunny day with a…
Posts published in “Essays”
After the ambush of October 15, 1879, that killed two civilian members of a posse, the four outlaws escaped into the forest east of Mendocino. In town, suspicions spread. About half of the original twenty-one…
March 3, 2021 — When Ferlinghetti died I thought maybe I should write what I knew about Shig’s accusation. But maybe I shouldn’t. Why tarnish the reputation of a man everybody respected (including me)? I…
(research by Deborah Silva) Wednesday, July 9, 1919 — Mendocino County's celebrated law man, Sheriff Ralph Byrnes, was in Fort Bragg when he got the chilling news: a newlywed woman was found murdered in her…
They’re demonized and exploited, revered for their youth and reviled simply because they’re young. They are today’s teenagers, the post-millennials, who came of age during Trump’s nightmare presidency, the flowering of the Black Lives Matter…
On October 15, 1879, four gunmen, intent on robbing the county sheriff, ambushed a posse of civilians in the woods east of Mendocino. Store owner Tom Dollard was murdered on the spot. Townsman Jim Nichols…
The anarchist, pacifist poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whom I knew for forty years was shy and introverted, even while he was a public figure who wanted to be recognized and appreciated as an artist. We performed…
(Mendocino County District Attorney History Series, Part II. Compiled by DA Dave Eyster) UKIAH - At the end of the 19th century WILLIAM GUSTAVUS "W. G." POAGE (-1953) started his service as Mendocino County's 14th…
Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is the great granddaughter of Leon Trotsky. She once told a mutual acquaintance that she still recalled the old man's jackets hanging in…