After reading Troy King's offering in the first AVA of February, this writer feels compelled to respond to some of the points of misconception raised by Mr. King. The opening line of Troy King's piece…
Posts published in “Essays”
After the Sebastopol City Council heard from two-dozen residents on Feb. 3 -- all of whom spoke against the huge Dairyman Winery and Distillery proposed for Highway 12 -- it unanimously and vigorously opposed the…
The barometric pressure is falling on a Sunday afternoon. I can feel it in my bones as I gaze out the window at the evergreen holly branches dancing in the breeze. The skies darken. I've…
One of the more interesting women I met anchored out was Diane Allen from Memphis, Tennessee. I was enchanted by her southern accent, and I couldn’t resist her dimpled smile. She taught classes on how…
A friend called last week to ask if I was aware of the recent carnage wreaked on the Mendocino headlands from Ford House down to the land above Portuguese Beach. She said giant bulldozer mowers had mowed everything, except the very largest shrubs, down to bare earth. I said I would take a look.
You may recognize Albert’s name from the Ukiah Daily Journal’s letters to the editor page that he frequents. Gadfly? Curmudgeon? Sounds about right…
Margaret and I are planning a trip to Sicily. It is an itch that just would not go away. It is not out of curiosity about the Mafia or Sicilian cuisine. Nor is it from…
Politics. So much fun, right? Not so much, maybe. Confusing and scary, more like. But there I was making my first foray into the political wilderness since 1968 in my landslide victory in the presidential…
The Santa Barbara morning fog was just burning off the coast as I pulled into the county’s Psychiatric Unit Facility (“puff”) to visit my brother, Phil. A sign on the locked front entrance re-directed visitors to a side door, used only after hours and on weekends. Security doors, buzzers, and thick panes of wired glass all conveyed the solemnity of a prison, but when I pressed the visitor’s bell outside and gave my name, the amplified voice of the psychiatric nurse through the wall-mounted speaker was surprisingly friendly. Soon an older woman cracked open the heavy door. She was carrying what looked to be a half-pound loop of shiny keys around her waist, and she graciously admitted me to Santa Barbara’s only public mental facility, where several dozen adult males and females are housed and monitored in a threat-free universe, with three square meals a day and clean sheets twice a week.