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Posts published in “Essays”

The War Bride

I was putting the last two pool balls in the pocket after losing a close game to Gary. Win or lose it didn’t matter to us. It was our one game a day that had…

Chronicle Of A Flood Foretold

Houston didn’t need to be warned. The city had already been sunk by four major hurricanes, each less powerful than Harvey, in the last 80 years. Generational storms. But boomtowns have short memories. After each…

A City Divided

Meg Courtney appears to be rather poor at keeping a secret. In early August Ms. Courtney somehow got hold of information from a closed session meeting of Fort Bragg's City Council. As a former council…

Pot Pollution Of Water Sources

The Laytonville Water District regularly tests for nitrates in our water, and we have never tested positive for it.  That’s because here in the Long Valley area there has never been a history of the…

Revenge Of A Wild Thing

Anderson Valley Fire Chief Andres Avila was resting on his back porch at his Yorkville home on a recent Sunday evening. It was a little after 8pm. The Chief was tired after a long weekend…

Mendocino Heat Wave

When I think of Mendocino I think of twisting up the serpentine highway from Navarro-By-The-Sea towards Navarro Ridge Road, and careless souls tumbling over the perilous cliffs. I think of when Olie lived on the ridge, and how he returned from Alaska one summer to find his prized mare had kicked the kind lady caretaking his horses, breaking her jaw and arm.

A Little Weirdness

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” That little gem comes to us from the fevered mind of gonzo journalism's most celebrated spurious doctor, the inimitable Hunter S. Thompson, and it serves as…

Baseball 2017

It’s that time of year again: time for me to write about the baseball season now exiled to distant outfields as political and meteorological storms grab the headlines. Last July, a bit earlier in the…

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