There comes a point in nearly every hot, irrational blow-up when those involved must surely, in a moment of clarity, set aside their rage and wonder how in the world things got so bad. In…
Posts published in “Essays”
On the second day of classes in the fall of 1967 Jim Jones integrated Anderson Valley High School. Walking down the hall to our first period senior government class, a group of us were startled…
Rancho Navarro is a subdivision of 135 ten-acre lots nestled in the woods northwest of the Navarro General Store. Most properties lack permanent dwellings, giving the steep terrain a parklike atmosphere. Hidden behind hills and…
Back in the dark ages of my youth, and I don’t mean to say that it was a dark time— quite the contrary, it was rather brightly illuminated; I was making a hyperbolic statement to…
“What’s a Limb Cast?” Any geologist or rockhound can tell you. If you bury any or all of a tree in hot volcanic ash the wood will burn away but leave a cast, or impression,…
When my friends ask librarians to recommend a novel by a local author that’s set in Sonoma County they suggest Greg Sarris’s Watermelon Nights and Jack London’s The Valley of the Moon. They rarely if ever point readers in…
I highly recommend that you read the well-written, very easy-to-understand Grand Jury Report titled, “Who Runs Mendocino County?” It’s a point-on discussion regarding the governing dynamic between and among the Board of Supervisors and the…
I’ve been feeling lately as if I should be (or should have been) evolving. Not in the literal sense, although some kind of spontaneous flash mutation like growing gills or supernumerary phalanges or toxin-secreting glands…
A February night in 1924, in a Manhattan concert hall owned by the Aeolian piano company… the wailing, warped, and flatted clarinet glissando that opens George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue announced the 20th century’s self-recognition…