California Governor Jerry Brown recently moved to restrict the use of some chemicals used as flame retardants, due to their impacts on human health. The ensuing scenario is a now-familiar one — attacks on the…
Anderson Valley Advertiser
On the Fourth of July the branches of the chokecherry trees in the yard bent nearly to the ground, heavy with fruit. The next morning proved to be a race against robins, warblers, blue jays…
“Things filled men with fear: the more things they had, the more they had to fear. Things had a way of riveting themselves on to the soul and then telling the soul what to do.”…
If the Democrats in Congress were all drinking water from the same faucet, there might be a clue to their chronic fear of the craven and cruel corporatist Republicans who dominate them. But they don’t,…
I recently wrote about the cork trees of the Iberian Peninsula, those great, handsome figures so emblematic of the interior plains of Portugal and Spain. But further abroad are many more trees of great stature…
As my hometown of Fertile, Minnesota celebrated its 125th anniversary last weekend, I found myself in a goofy outfit out in the cemetery playing the role of one of the town's old pioneers, H.L. Gaylord.…
Step aboard the wayback machine for another trip to Anderson Valley of my childhood in the late 1950s and 1960s — and in this case, into the 1970s. I begin with an apology for taking…
My brother lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, so I'm visiting in the south, always creepy and exciting together -- the Confederacy, the other country inside the United States. We've been civil warring up and down the…