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Posts published in “Essays”

New Year’s Resolutions, Lies & Excuses

Now’s the time of year we bore readers with New Year Resolutions, in which talent-free columnists promise to lose weight, learn a foreign language, volunteer at the library, join a health club, go vegan and…

Counting Lumber Mills & Logging Railroads

With the local timber industry ever waning in Mendocino County it’s educational to look back and see what a role logging railroads and lumber mills once played in the local economy. Take logging railroads —…

San Francisco During The War [1949]

World War II hit Baghdad by the Bay like a ton of block busters. Overnight the self-contained, self-satisfied city whose population had stood absolutely still for a decade was transformed into a major Port of…

The Future Of Shoes: Cheap & Ugly

I have seen the future of footgear, and its name is Hey Dude.  Despite the improbable brand label, Hey Dude shoes will soon sweep the country like hula hoops, Beanie Babies and Taylor Swift all…

Hardy’s Christmas Ghost

Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘A Christmas Ghost-Story’ was published in the England’s Westminster Gazette in December 1899, two months after the start of the Second Anglo-Boer War. The ghost is that of a soldier, and the…

Falls City, Oregon: An American Town?

It’s a hot quiet weekday morning in Falls City, Oregon, which is more of a town than a city, at least by the standards of a northern Californian who has lived in Santa Rosa and…

Schutz’s Angels & Other Christmas Oratorio

Forget the Christmas tree and Saint Nic’s suit, it is music that marks Germany’s greatest contributions to the holiday. Aside from any number of carols, there is the ubiquitous Messiah, like Handel himself, to be…

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