Ruth Gottstein died in late August at the age of 100. She was the founder of Volcano Press, a small publisher in the Sierra foothills that brought out Dell Martin’s “Battered Wives” and more than…
Posts published in “Essays”
Back in the late seventies I went down to Hopland with a couple guys to load up a truck with fallen fruit to make pear brandy. Don Fi knew the orchard manager and made the…
It was all about the Queen until it wasn’t. And it was precisely at that point that Charles didn’t sing along. When it came time for “God Save the King” at the end of his…
Driving through Anderson Valley recently, I realized most of the sheep pastures, mill sites and apple orchards of my youth had turned into vineyards. Those many vineyards have begat an equally dizzying number of winery…
Dear Rebecca Mandelstam, I’m responding to your “Dear Friend” letter, which I received via e-mail yesterday. First, I hope we are “friends,” in some sense, or at least might be, should things work out appropriately…
In 1989, I had a comical but revealing series of encounters with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his palatial mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. He had bought the giant house, with 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms,…
by Fred Gardner A few months ago Governor Newsom visited Alameda Point – our decommissioned Naval Air Station, renamed by developers – to hold a press conference at the HQ of a company called Astra Space,…
We can hardly encounter a steaming chunk of news media these days without being forced to consider the matter of the Guilty as Hell cop who got a sweetheart deal despite wronging an innocent lass…
Writing a story about the AV Food Bank after it has provided 40 years of service to our community turns out to be mostly a tale of many generous people. Robyn Harper whose name pops…