“Life is cheap up here on the Canadian,” is a line from Lonesome Dove that has stuck with me. When something goes even moderately wrong at the ranch I sometimes say, “Life sure is rough…
Posts tagged as “essays”
All traces of snow are at last gone from the picturesque nineteenth-century cemetery in Ithaca, New York. Down below in the nearby the Cascadilla Gorge the creek gathers momentum from late-arriving spring’s rain. Just beyond…
We have always loved our City Council. We know they are flawed but they have always been a big part of what makes life gracious in our little city — the freedom to build our…
Having just completed a well-deserved and long-deferred vacation, I am now questioning the wisdom and efficacy of that course of action, weighing the relief of stress against the loss of momentum and comforting allure of…
Mozart’s music is for everybody, from diaper-clad babies to mass-murdering dictators. That chilling truth launches the brutal slapstick satire—or do I mean hyper-realist romp?—of Armando Iannuci’s delightful and disturbing film, Death of Stalin. What we…
Politically in Fort Bragg, the proverbial rubber is meeting a hot tar road. The big boxes are coming to Hare Creek. Georgia Pacific is running hard to disengage from the mill site cleanup. The Planning…
The Gowan name is known throughout our region for wonderful local apples and produce, so it does not come as a surprise that the history of Cecil and Alice (nee Studebaker) Gowan's family in Mendocino County is deep and rich. Both sets of Alice's grandparents moved to the Anderson Valley in the 1860's. Notably one of her grandfathers traded sixteen horses for his initial home property in Philo. Cecil's family moved to the Anderson Valley from Shelter Cove in 1902 when Cecil was 13.
I have always liked the "well-oiled machine" comparison, evoking as it does images of briskly humming gears, cogs, cams, and belts efficently spinning away and finely tooled components seating themselves with satisfying metallic clicks and…