When you write for a living, you invariably pen obituaries in advance so they are ready to be published as soon as the death knell of the famous is sounded. I could never do that…
Posts published in “Essays”
Last week, we discussed that the Board of Supervisors in October gave the provisional go-ahead to expand pot cultivation in Mendocino County despite opposition from the Sheriff, environmentalists, and ranchers. By a 4-to-1 vote, the…
Many things puzzle me about Ukiah and someday I’ll write a 25,000 word column listing them. For today, let’s limit ourselves to asking why so many houses stand empty around town. Not far from my…
This has been a year of debate about social justice. From Black Lives Matter marches to Donald Trump rallies, hundreds of thousands have gathered to express their views. It’s been a national story. But when…
A month and a day after the storming of the Capitol came the national rites of healing. These were enacted not in an atmosphere of penitential sacrifice and prayer, but through elaborate choreographies of unbridled…
When longtime Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle accepted my invitation for an interview, I assumed he merely wanted an opportunity to soften his image, spew some PC platitudes, and question the ratios I had derived…
I was hunting down some morning coffee at daughter Emily’s place in Santa Rosa and I opened a kitchen cupboard, pulled out a big white cup with big black letters that said: BITCH, PLEASE. I’M…
The Roaring Twenties had just begun to roar, you couldn't buy a drink in Ukiah but you could in Point Arena, brothels catering to the transient men of the booming logging industry were the social…
They were nearly all Isolatoes, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were!…