The first white people to settle this place alongside the Albion River were treated with kindness by the Pomo who periodically camped on a portion of what came to be called the Macdonald Ranch. Those…
Posts published in October 2012
In 1950 the journal Mind featured a curious proposal for determining if a computer could think. Submitted by code-breaker and computing pioneer Alan Turing, the idea was that an examiner would pose questions to a…
“You don’t have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.” — John Ciardi My last few trips to the village of Mendocino have coincided with the lunchtime release of the…
It was 520 years ago this week that a lost Italian seaman flying the Spanish flag washed ashore on the Bahama Islands, three-quarters of a world away from where he thought he was, and became…
In his opening statement Tuesday in the murder trial of Billy Norbury, Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster described for the jury the “nightmare” scenario where Norbury allegedly shot and killed his Redwood Valley neighbor,…
I, Dennis O’Brien, hereby declare: My name is Dennis O’Brien. I am a resident of Mendocino County, at least 18 years of age, and a citizen of the United States. On April 16, 2012, at…
A FEDERAL TASK FORCE raided the Potter Valley family property of Mendocino County Under-Sheriff Randy Johnson last Thursday (October 11th). The raid team included DEA, FBI and IRS agents who are said to have confiscated…
RYAN J. WALLIS, 32, of San Francisco, has been arrested for suspected drunken driving and vehicular manslaughter in the death of his younger sister in a 3am single vehicle crash near Navarro early Friday morning…
I never attended Kindergarten. I’ve had the audacity, over the years and decades, to claim that fact as the underlying reason for every life failure (or life lesson gone awry) that I’ve ever experienced since…