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Posts published in “Essays”

Cardinals Advance to Championship

The Mendocino High school girls Varsity basketball team delivered an after-school lesson in the fundamentals of the game to Emery High school as they thrashed the visiting Spartans 58-34 in the second round of Division 6 NCS League playoffs on March 1. And now the Cardinals will travel to the big city – to Santa Rosa - on Saturday night as they carry the hopes of Mendocino County with them into the Championship game of the CIF NCS League Division 6.

Erudition

In the tertulias of times past, there was always a scholar who knew everything. He remembered names, faces, dates, and data with absolute precision thanks to his privileged memory which was nourished by voluminous, diverse, and at times, useless reading. Any argument would ultimately appeal to him to act as the Court of Appeals.

Why The Lights Go Out Again & Again & Again

Early January. Big storm, lots of rain; the electricity goes off for four days. I'm not home. I'm traveling. I return a few days later and there it is: the long puddle of putrid water…

Hospitality & Ruffing

How do you top the story of the Fort Bragg City Council approving an ordinance that provides for cannabis manufacturing within the industrial zones of city limits. With four magic words that at once ignite…

Policing Mendocino County

In this interview, Deputy Orell Massey, Mendocino County’s first and only black deputy, looks back... Midnight Rambler Incident — I was on patrol one night and saw a car going about 80 miles an hour.…

The Sound Of Your Own Heels

There is a popular expression — among the sort of unimaginative types who continually recycle "witticisms" until any acuity they may once have had has long been worn away — about opinions and their relationship…

Boat Sunk, Dog Dead

When Olive was taken to the animal shelter in Ukiah thousands of people reached out to me. Every day I meet people who ask me about the dog. Folks that I do not really think…

White Supremacy & Music Theory

For several years my grandparents lived in a small house on the same property on Bainbridge Island as my nuclear family—nuclear in more than one sense, since our home was a dozen miles from the…

Shapiro vs. Sausalito

A yellow dredge sat scuttled in Richardson Bay, less than 100 yards south of the Napa St. pier, and about the same distance from the shoreline and the Sausalito Cruising Club. It was a barge with huge steel tanks for flotation, a wooden deck and 2-story superstructure.

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