July 4, 2025
Rip Taylor is a classic comedian whose career in show business spans over 50 years.
He is known to many as the king of confetti for his trademark act of throwing confetti into the audience. First gaining initial prominence as the crying comedian on the Ed Sullivan show, he has worked on various TV shows including the Jackie Gleason show, the Monkees, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, the Gong Show as well as on stage broadway and Las Vegas.
If I still believed the things I was told when I was a teenager, barely able to distinguish truth from fiction, I would be as cranked up about a vast liberal conspiracy to control my every action, take my guns away, and teach my offspring to be sexual deviants as the vast majority of Americans. Actually, that’s not exactly correct.
You’d have to be nearly blind, seriously drunk or very stoned to miss the connections. Earlier this month we noticed a Press Democrat article: “Sonoma County wineries ponder possibility of pairing with cannabis industry.” The…
Kelp forests are the most complex and abundant ecosystems on earth, exceeding when they are healthy even tropical rain forests in both the diversity of species and the abundance of individuals. Enormous kelp forests once extended the length of the pacific coast to Alaska stretching out as much as three miles into the ocean. The little fish hide, the big fish lurk and the total ecosystem is extraordinarily diverse complicated and abundant. A kelp forest is a biological miracle.
Since the election of Donald Trump, I have been haunted by aphorisms. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything is connected. There are no accidents. Life is but a dream.
In 1994 I called the Anderson Valley Health Center from a phone connected to a Redwood tree stump. I was in the third year of clearing land, milling wood, and building our house. I was…
If you have been paying attention—and if you haven't, shame! There will be a quiz at the conclusion of this installment — you know that around this time last year I wrote an epic poem…
