Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “essays”

Other People’s Weed

If you think of the weed world as a chair with four legs then the legs are the grower, the dealer, the go-between and the consumer. Each plays an essential part, though the go-between or…

My Jewish Christmas

I did what Americans Jews are supposed to do on Christmas. I ate Chinese food. Not alone, but with three other members of my family: my two younger brothers and my sister-in-law who was born…

Ranching Near Laytonville, 1902-1907

When we were growing up around Laytonville in the 1900s, Papa used to say that folks in California need never go hungry if they have piece of ground and are willing and able to work.…

Cookies to Kodiak

Christmas Cookies. Just the thought of warm freshly-baked cookies gives one a cozy, fuzzy holiday feeling. That’s what I was thinking when, a couple of days after Thanksgiving, I realized that soon Christmas would be…

Christmas 1918

Christmas fell on a Wednesday in 1918. Letters were still arriving in Mendocino from men who had fought the War to End All Wars. Though the armistice had been signed a month and a half…

The Ghetto Expert

A put-down of George Butterworth, the head of gang-related prosecutions during Terence Hallinan's eight years as San Francisco District Attorney, drew a response from AVA reader Jim Miller, a retired SFPD officer. He wrote that…

Uncrowning The Crown

Watching the Netflix show, The Crown, now in its fourth season, I reminded myself that when I lived in England in the mid-1960s, I never stood in movie theaters when “God Save the Queen” played, and when…

-