The night hung on deep summer Ukiah like damp, dark wool— thick, heavy, and vaguely redolent of an indefinable funk. Insectile whirrs, chirps and chillers carried for miles in the still, superheated air and gave,…
Posts published in “Essays”
I was out on a midsummer skulk in classic thief's habit, head-to-toe black and making no more impression on the night than the shadow of a knife. Throughout the lanes and byways of the little…
On Friday after the accident, while I was in the Modesto hospital, our insurance agent told us they had found a place for me to go for physical therapy. It's a nice place, they said, just down the road a few miles, so I would be leaving the Modesto Hospital (where they operated on my crushed ankle) the next morning, Saturday morning. They picked me up in an ambulance, loaded me up and took me down the road to this rehab place.
In the spring of ’68 I’d been hired as an editor at Ramparts magazine. The office was on Broadway off Sansome Street in San Francisco. One day in early summer Tom Hayden called and asked…
I recently wrote a piece about my friend Ann Menebroker, the fine poet who died recently at the age of eighty. In response, I received a number of communiqués from people who wanted to read more snippets from Annie’s letters, so I present them here with one of Annie’s poems.
By the time readers peruse this issue of the AVA, yours truly should be embarked on a 75-mile section of the John Muir Trail (JMT). Getting to a JMT trailhead is easy if you're starting…
Thirty-odd years ago, the Simple Living Workshop made its debut at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds - a weekend-long event which had its origins at the Ukiah Community Center. Buddy Eller, Cathy Monroe, Neill Bell, Judy…
I moved to Sacramento in 1980. I was 31 and experiencing a bit of success with my writing. I bought a piano and an old house in a quiet neighborhood and thus began my fifteen-year residency in that river town. I still own the piano and play her every day.