To the average browser looking at a shelf of used books on Western Americana at Grassroots Books in Reno it wasn’t much. A weathered old publication called California Journal of Mines and Geology, Volume 49,…
Posts published in “Essays”
In California, when the issue is water, the ironies seem to string out in seamless succession. Bill Warne, the man who built the California Water Project, was in government service nearly all his life, and…
I recently spent three days in the town of Sonoma, visiting friends and revisiting familiar places like Oak Hill Farm that I wrote about in Field Days, my book about farms, farmers and field workers.…
In the early 1980s, a faithful correspondent, Wanda Tinasky, who purported to be a literary bag lady who lived under bridges on the Mendocino Coast, turned out to be an erudite former San Francisco beatnik…
The NY Times showed extreme contempt for readers June 6 with a front-page story hedded “US Officials Detect Signs of Kyiv’s Counteroffensive.” Why pretend that US officials aren’t involved in major strategic decisions? Who do…
Many of today’s social ills can be traced to, and laid at the doorstep of, well-meaning intellectual dwarves who were naive, smug and opinionated. In other words, the boomer generation. I know. I’m one. Things…
The generosity of three people Tina Walter, her sister Lisa and Peter Gordon led us to an eye opening mini vacation at a Vintage beach house in Venice, California. We bid on the stay in…