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Posts published in “Essays”

Having COVID, Twice

I’ve been going to work every day in person since May 2020, with the exception of the holidays breaks, and the two separate instances I had COVID – in November 2020, and the instance I’m…

DA History Series – Part IV: Doc Standley

Jeremiah “Doc” Standley was born August 20, 1845 in Andrew County, Missouri, the son of Harrison and Elizabeth Standley. When he was 8 years of age, the family moved from Missouri to settle in California.…

Fishing With Chris Isbell

I moved to the Anderson Valley in the fall of 1971 and this fall it will be 50 years I have lived here. I don't know where the time is gone. In the summer of…

Fred Hampton’s Chicago

After watching Judas and the Black Messiah, I called John Woodford for a reality check. In the summer of 1968 Woodford, then 27, was a staff writer at Ebony magazine in Chicago. His proposals for…

Sam & Marguerite

It's time to get down to the biography of Sam and Marguerite Avery's life in Anderson Valley, 1946-77. In preparation I went back to my archives to find a copy of the local monthly newspaper,…

Clarence Ford’s Ride with Dr. Wheeler

After Dr. John F. Wheeler had been arrested as the suspected ringleader of four other men who ambushed a constable's posse, killing two civilians, the dentist faced an arraignment. Under a second day of questioning,…

Read No Evil

With PC outrage on the rise over several children’s books by the newly “racist” Dr. Seuss, I called up the Ukiah library to see if Dr. Seuss’s head might be next on the guillotine of…

Coming Soon, Flying Carpets

Today we explore the shabby, semi-shady spending schemes of our elected representatives who, failing repeatedly and learning nothing, plunge ahead with billion dollar projects you and I know are idiotic.  (One of) Jerry Brown’s follies…

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