All emergency staff meetings at the tony French Laundromat bistro require mandatory attendance, but the latest meeting announcement was a picture of existential urgency. The first hint was that the meeting was called by the…
Posts published in “Essays”
You'd think government employees, especially high-ranking officials, would feel relatively fortunate. Their salaries are decent and they enjoy job security unavailable in the private sector. And yet, as 2020 ends, five San Francisco department heads…
Theodora was Handel’s penultimate oratorio and his least successful. The London premiere came in March of 1750, but the work closed after just three performances. English language sung dramas—oratorios—had enriched Handel in the period from…
County elected officials and the impacts of their actions (or inaction, in the case of a few, like Mendocino’s Dan Gjerde) reflect life-long ambitions and collaborations that the mostly oblivious or at least inattentive “public”…
I have been admiring Brad Wiley's Valley Vistas articles. There are probably only a few readers of the AVA who will know most of the dizzying display of homesteads, ridges, creeks, ranches and characters mentioned…
You could see this coming a million miles away. Governor Gavin Newsom has by now established a pattern of telegraphing his next, immediate move. A few days preceding the action to be taken, he gives…
Remember that conspiracy story in the run-up to the 2020 election? Trump was going to cripple the Postal Service by somehow defunding it while his henchman, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, dismantled operations of the vote…