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Posts published in “Essays”

Bob Marley Spins In His Grave

The Marley estate plans to use Bob Marley's name or image on a vast array of products, from Marley coffee (the slogan: 'Stir it Up') to soccer balls, bedsheets, and a Grand Theft Auto-ish video…

Pearl Harbor Survivor

Count me as one. I was two, my brother one, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941. My brother and I were born in Honolulu where our paternal grandfather, a Scots immigrant,…

Ladies Of The Night

In the wake of the lumber boom of the late 1800s that swept the North Coast, numerous saloons sprang up in Mendocino and other Mendocino County towns. A Saturday night spent leaning on the bar…

Multiple Thanks

The week before Thanksgiving, we pre-ordered our organic, free-range, successfully psychoanalyzed, thrice-blessed, kosher, Pulitzer-Prize-winning turkey from Harvest Market and then drove to Santa Rosa to spend a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving with Marcia’s mother Opal at Spring Lake Village, a groovy retirement community where Opal has lived for many years.

The Sheriff’s Tragic Accident

The Byrnes family arrived in Mendocino County around 1880. The patriarch, Michael J. Byrnes had been born in Boston, Massachusetts either in 1840 or 1841. He headed westward in 1862. One might guess that he…

Wild Man Still On The Loose

To this day “Oh, Lord, it’s Jerry Lee Lewis,” or some variation of that, is probably a fairly common response to any encounter with Jerry Lee; his reputation has always preceded him. It was pretty much my reaction when I heard there was yet another Jerry Lee Lewis book on the horizon.

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