In the fall of 1971 I was about to be cut off at the knees if I didn't “do something productive” with my life. I was 17 and had been out of school for a year, a casualty of “dress code” politics. (I'd braided a foot-long eagle feather into my hair in honor of the first Native American Week, and when I refused to take it out, they kicked me out.)
Anderson Valley Advertiser
It was raining Sunday, nobody else from the AVA wanted to go, I would miss the 49er’s game on television, and I had almost no confidence in the leadership abilities of the persons organizing Headwaters…
As many observers noted after the death of Allen Ginsberg on April 4, probably his greatest work was his first major poem, “Howl.” It was the battering ram that finally broke down the legal barriers…
Twenty-eight years have led me to this room up in the old hotel, above the neon. The manager, Mr. Chen, gives me the grand tour; communal kitchen, bathroom down the hall, no guests after ten,…
The Live Oak Building that stands today as a centerpiece in downtown Boonville was at one time a busy repair garage and filling station. Built at the height of America's love affair with the automobile,…
The recent suicides of the Heaven's Gate 39 met with nothing but horror, condemnation and ridicule from the American media and public. Time issues a special report — “Inside the Web of Death”; the Sheriff…
In 1968, after serving as a rifleman in Vietnam, I returned to the 82nd Airborne in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fort Bragg was the home of the JFK Special Warfare Center, and a friend of…
Boonville is the largest of four tiny settlements in the twenty-mile-long Anderson Valley. It has two things going for it; it’s very beautiful and it’s only a couple of hours north of San Francisco. The…
Rock and Roll Trivia — This may be the most trivial bit of rock and roll trivia there is. Everyone knows what a “groupie” is; the word started out meaning girls who followed musical bands…