Last night I attended the Mendocino Music Festival’s third orchestral concert of this year’s festival, my wife a cellist in the most excellent orchestra. The second half of the program was Symphony No. 2 in E minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff, a massive work that lasted more than an hour. The third movement of the four-movement symphony was especially moving to me—the glorious music swamping my psyche and catalyzing several epiphanies about the novel I’m currently writing.
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A gentle rain keeps me company in the wee hours as I pen these words. We desperately needed it. Throughout May and June, storms danced by with thunder and lightning all around, teasing us like…
“But my father’s dying.” I didn’t want to say the word “dying” because I still had hope for a miracle and was superstitious about such pronouncements, but needs must at a visa interview at the…
The Albion River is dry. That should be enough of an alarm for some people. Obviously, there is water at its mouth, but the river itself is not flowing. At the confluence of the south…
The Fifth Annual Not-So-Simple Living Fair at the Boonville Fairgrounds saw an avid throng of attendees. The event is hugely popular and crucial to a growing and widely diverse demographic of Mendocino County. That demographic…
Steven Berry is a Marine. He barely survived heavy fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan, suffering such horrific injuries in Afghanistan that he was medically retired after ten years of service, four of those years…
ELLEN TINKLER has died. A long-time resident of Ray's Road, Philo, Mrs. Tinkler had been disabled by Lou Gehrig's Disease. Mrs. Tinkler was a retired elementary school teacher. She is survived by her husband, Ron…
What a mess! Outside the bucolic bubble that is Boonville and not far beyond, the world seems to be almost spinning out of control. We have increasingly tragic events, some of which are being considered as war crimes, in regions such as the Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, Libya, and others; the spreading Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the crashing/shooting down of civilian airplanes; the continuing despicable acts by Boko Haram in Nigeria; thousands of children being held at the Mexican/US border after fleeing their drug-cartel dominated countries; and now here in California we are starting to see some large and out-of-control wildfires amidst terrible drought conditions.