On February 22, 1998, Pete Gallagher arrived at Building 13 at Solano State Prison in Vacaville, California. It was Gallagher’s thirteenth year behind bars, and he’d already done time in Chino, Folsom, San Quentin and,…
Posts published in “Essays”
We’re only a year removed from Matt Cain’s perfect game. Certainly legions of Giants fans would say this was the finest performance ever by a major league pitcher. Older aficionados with a sense of the…
Last week the Santa Rosa Press Democrat ran a story titled, “Winegrowers facing labor hurdles as harvest season approaches.” The story began, “Grape growers and farmers throughout the state are facing a range of challenges…
There is one supreme and universal law of human relations in all its manifestations, social, political, economic, cultural: people create no end of mischief in the hours when they are not sleeping. Any vision of…
Fifty-five years ago the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco. I was four years old and occasionally hid in our large clothes hamper to pray for Willie Mays to hit a home run.…
Continued from last week’s AVA, the Congressional hearing at which marijuana prohibition was debated. The witness, Dr. William Woodward of the American Medical Association, expressed opposition to the pending bill. He was relentlessly attacked by…
She could be seen nearly any day of the week, sitting on the the sidewalk outside the market or liquor store. She would usually have her cats with her, crowded into a pet box. She wore several layers of clothing which she got from the free box, topped off by a floppy hat made of white cotton eyelet. Her name was Nellie.