Take this as a national parable. Once upon a time–in the early eighties, actually–there was a progressive coalition in Vermont designed to become a third force in politics. One of its prime spokesmen was Bernie…
Posts published in “Essays”
Not far from Stafford there's a thousand-year-old tree, once slated for destruction, that will now live on for centuries. Except for a pitifully small “buffer zone,” the primeval forest surrounding it will vanish while this…
The land war in Southern California reaches back at least to the early 1990s. In those years, the big developers — Pardee, Bren Home, McMillan, Standard American, and the Irvine Land Company were building sprawling…
In the 1950s there were more than 20 lumber mills in Anderson Valley. The mills were often surrounded by houses that in the beginning of the lumber boom were called shacks. A high percentage of…
My pets tend to live a long time. That’s the good news and the bad news. The good news is that a long life usually is a sign of a well-lived life. The bad news…
Anderson Valley High School’s head football coach for the past 13 years has been Dan Kuny. His mother was a red-headed Arkie woman who died much too young from cancer. She was a vivid lady…
Someone made the odd, maybe malicious, certainly rash decision to put Tom Wolfe on the right hand side of Harper’s 150th anniversary cover, facing Mark Twain, a leonine, earthy, dignified old devil, sitting in alert…
Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, one cannot help but to think of Jesse Jackson. Not the Jesse Jackson of hymietown fame, nor the Jesse Jackson of the stifling, impotent Democratic Party who likes to…
A very big rig truck pulls up in front of a very small Boonville store every Thursday morning about 11. The truck and trailer are a lot bigger than the store. The driver of this…