Best Wine Industry Writing: Will Parrish's on-going series about the industrial booze business's many depredations, social and environmental. Worst wine writing: A tie between the Chronicle and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat whose staffs turn…
Posts published in December 2011
Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comfortably then I shall begin. Well that’s Christmas/Whatever-you-call-it ‘done and dusted’ and now on to Act 2 — New Year’s Eve! Try to enjoy yourselves and if…
I met with Terry at the conference room upstairs in the Farrer Building in downtown Boonville where she had arrived just before me with coffee and cinnamon rolls from Mosswood Market next door. Things had…
The possum baby slashed and jerked its way around Joanna’s uterus in a river of milky white mucus and blood. “Ya muthafuckin’ beast!” she wailed at it, her back grindin’ into the bed while she…
Before the Judicial Council was voted in by the people of the State in California, the local judge was a Justice of the Peace and was known to the people as a J.P. He would…
The Turks were so patient for putting up with me this fall as I cycled around the western half of Turkey. I cringe now when I recall the many times, while in conversation with strangers,…
NOT SO TABOO Editor, This week's letters section is a fine demonstration of why sex, religion and politics are traditionally taboo topics in “polite” company. An observation: Sex, religion and politics are, aside from the…
“To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.” — Nadia Boulanger During the four years in the early 1990’s when I ran the Creative Writing program for the…
It’s been a triumphant month for Big Oil. First, the Obama administration teamed with the Chinese delegation to scuttle the timid climate agenda at the Durban summit. Then recidivist offender British Petroleum won the rights…