Way back when I was a free-range kid in coastal Southern California, there was a decent-sized freshwater pond about a twenty-minute walk through the barbed-wire fence and up into the hills behind our street. Whether…
Posts published in “Essays”
It was a time when everybody in the neighborhood trusted everybody else. I mean that my parents and Dave’s parents trusted each other with their kids; even though our parents rarely spoke to each other.…
Is there a city in California, other than Ukiah, so eager to wipe out its history and destroy architecturally significant buildings? Why does Ukiah have a near spotless record of bulldozing and/or setting fire to…
“The power of the dog is all those urges, all those deep, uncontrollable urges that can come and destroy us.” – Jane Campion, director, screenwriter What’s a “western”? Moviegoers and film critics have been asking…
At well over two hours running time, Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up (streaming on Netflix) isn’t exactly a bagatelle, but it mostly retains its satiric lightness and goes by quickly. A holiday film about the…
Mushroom foraging was something the nineteenth century European immigrants, Italians, Germans, Swiss and French brought to the United States and to Anderson Valley. When I first moved here, I heard stories about the old-timer Italians…
Susan B. I once held her in my arms and there she was on the front page of The Times January 10 in an obituary for the son of a real estate mogul. Real estate moguls are celebs…