Seen you in the supermarket you and Lily Tomlin got a big hit and leaning in for Hillary I ain't surprised not one little bit Jane like stalkin' my mind from time to time Can't…
Posts published in “Essays”
The essential trait shared by creators of movies and symphonies is vanity. Neither form of expression would exist without the unshakeable belief of the director or composer that the entire concert hall or cinema audience,…
In my childhood, I was surrounded by evidence that there was something very important going on. Down half a block and around the corner a series of flags began to appear in front windows. Eventually…
Peg Melnik wrote an excellent article on the Barron Herzog Wines several weeks ago in the Press Democrat. She included some of the history of the Herzog Family starting in 1840. I am going to…
It was the last hours of 1999. Lots of people who should know better had predicted that the world would end at midnight. The computers that run industrial civilization wouldn’t be able to make the…
OK, here’s your civics quiz for the week. Who said the following? “It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing…
Now’s the time of year we bore readers with New Year Resolutions, in which talent-free columnists promise to lose weight, learn a foreign language, volunteer at the library, join a health club, go vegan and…
With the local timber industry ever waning in Mendocino County it’s educational to look back and see what a role logging railroads and lumber mills once played in the local economy. Take logging railroads —…
World War II hit Baghdad by the Bay like a ton of block busters. Overnight the self-contained, self-satisfied city whose population had stood absolutely still for a decade was transformed into a major Port of…