Christmas Cookies. Just the thought of warm freshly-baked cookies gives one a cozy, fuzzy holiday feeling. That’s what I was thinking when, a couple of days after Thanksgiving, I realized that soon Christmas would be…
Posts published in “Essays”
Christmas fell on a Wednesday in 1918. Letters were still arriving in Mendocino from men who had fought the War to End All Wars. Though the armistice had been signed a month and a half…
A put-down of George Butterworth, the head of gang-related prosecutions during Terence Hallinan's eight years as San Francisco District Attorney, drew a response from AVA reader Jim Miller, a retired SFPD officer. He wrote that…
The roll out of both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines have gone much more smoothly than many other aspects of battling this pandemic have so far...
Watching the Netflix show, The Crown, now in its fourth season, I reminded myself that when I lived in England in the mid-1960s, I never stood in movie theaters when “God Save the Queen” played, and when…
AV High Principal Jim Snyder, landlord Barbara Goodell, and very busy Steve Wood, among others, sued me to try to add county code to my conservation easement with the Anderson Valley Land Trust. Their lawsuit…
On Monday, Dec. 14, President-elect Joe Biden addressed the nation after the Electoral College officially rubber-stamped his win over President Donald Trump and proved he’s no Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who lifted up a Depression Era…
Several months ago I did a column on place names on the Mendocino Coast. An AVA reader, Jonah Raskin, left a comment on the newspaper’s website suggesting I write a column on native place names…
The Dollar Tree store is heaven on earth, A strip mall version of a miracle birth. Candy and incense and napkins and jam, Put your wrinkled buck down, thank you much, ma'am! It's bang on…