Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in May 2012

The Death Of American Syrah

Slim, bespectacled Jean Jacques Brun was pouring a modernly designed 2009 Brun Avril magnum that was cork tainted — i.e. smelled of bleach. I was his first taster of the afternoon and he eyeballed my…

My First Boontling Classic Run

I run for the joy of it by myself in the nights when only the owls and skunks keep me company. Because I was asked to create this year's t-shirt I felt that it was…

Bird’s Eye View

Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comfortably then I shall begin. Here’s this month’s birthday boys and girls from among the Senior Center regulars: Joan Spears, Judy Basehore, Jim Lindsey — ‘Many Happy…

Lives & Times Of Valley Folks: Frank Wyant

Frank was born in the town of O’Neill in northern Nebraska on February 21st, 1936 to parents Frank Wyant Sr. and Mabel Ross, who five years later had another son, Alan, and then eleven years…

River Views

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” That line from John Ford’s film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance proves apt for tales of the Old West time and again. The shootout between feuding…

Jerry Brown: The Big Oil Governor

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, is back in the news in an article in today’s Sacramento Bee about the increase in steam injection oil drilling permits since Governor Jerry Brown…

Laughing

“Humor is just another defense against the universe.” — Mel Brooks Once upon a time, so many years ago it might have been another lifetime, I got two kittens, a boy and girl, and after…

Laboratory Vineyards

For ten years, Abe Schoener has been recording the unfolding history of California’s climate and geology — but he is not a government scientist drawing sedimentary core samples from the Earth or a hydrologist taking…

-