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An Englishman Rides To Boonville
October, 2008 — We’re still riding south on Highway 101. We haven’t traveled far enough south to make any climatic difference, but the mist of the past two days has disappeared and it feels as if...
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Mendocino County Today: November 27, 2012
MENDOCINO COUNTY PRELIMINARY ELECTION RESULTS for federal and state offices. (Name, Party, vote total, percentage) President: Jill Stein Grn 471 2.61% Thomas Hoefling AI 83 0.46% Mitt Romney Rep 5129...
View ArticleMendocino ‘Magic’
An entire fascinating article on mushrooms recently appeared in the AVA with nary a mention of those particular types prone to causing intoxication, visions, hysteria, revelation, even vomiting. Kind...
View ArticleCowboys Forever, At Least In Covelo
While visiting Willits for Thanksgiving, on Black Friday I dropped into its elegant feed store/pet store/tack shop/ranchwear and coffee shop, J.D. Redhouse & Co., in the middle of town on the...
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Does Pot Stink? (Or Is It Just You?)
Toward the end of the day of their November 13th meeting, the Board endured two hours of mind-numbing opinion from actuaries and consultants and staff about adding a new retirement tier for new hires....
View ArticleSports Notes
Local boy Jacob Gowan is Stanford’s long-snapper on this year’s outstanding Cardinal football team. He is also a coach’s dream because he is a fine Division I athlete playing varsity football while...
View ArticleValley People
ARE YOUR HATCHES BATTENED? Storms beginning now will drench us so thoroughly for the next five or six days we’re assuming 128 will be closed at Navarro by week’s end. Even the cops are warning to...
View ArticleOff The Record
AS OF TUESDAY MORNING, the Boonville newspaper of last week had still not reached San Francisco. The week before, it got to New Jersey before it got to Frisco. The various layers of the Post Office...
View ArticleThanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a time of feasting and visiting between families and friends who join in the offering of thanks for all those blessings bestowed since the last Thanksgiving. Many were in far-off...
View ArticleLooking Back, Part 8
My parents, along with my third grade teacher, Miss Wright, highly encouraged me to read as many books as I could during my “leisure time” (when I was not engaged in those other extracurricular...
View ArticleParadigms Shifting
“I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.” — Henry David Thoreau I am writing the first draft of this essay with pen on paper...
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Two Blocks From The Plaza
Immortality is a bummer for a genius. It lasts too long and it’s very noisy. It’s hard to rest in peace when millions praise you day and night, on full volume. Not shabby, Herr Mozart! Bravo,...
View ArticleRiver Views
During World War I, my maternal grandmother grew up on a ranch in the sand hills above the North Platte River of Nebraska. My great-grandparents, Dennis and Mary Emily Ward, raised my mother’s mother...
View ArticleBird’s Eye View
Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comfortably then I shall begin. Hopefully you have recovered from America’s Finest Holiday that took place last Thursday and have by now finally finished off...
View ArticleMendocino County Today: November 28, 2012
ARE YOUR HATCHES BATTENED? Storms beginning now will drench us so thoroughly for the next five or six days we’re assuming Highway 128 will be closed at Navarro by week’s end. Even the cops are warning...
View ArticleLives & Times Of Valley Folks: Fred R. Buonanno
I met Fred at his Philo Ridge Vineyards tasting room in downtown Boonville. With manager Jill Derwinski holding the fort we sat down and, with a bottle of delicious pinot gris at hand, began our...
View ArticleA Flash In The Pan
The mood on Election Night was as tense as a cold vintage Condrieu inside the dank, red velvet-lined interiors of Bern’s steakhouse in Tampa, Florida. Home of the largest private wine collection in the...
View ArticleWhen Apples Were King
With vineyards everywhere one looks in Anderson Valley today, it may be hard to believe grapes weren’t always huge here. Believe it. Anderson Valley agriculture was much different during my time in the...
View ArticlePaula Broadwell, Whistleblower
Q: What name did Monica Lewinsky call Maureen Dowd? Answer below. In Men in Black Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith make use of a device that erases memory as they save the USA and the whole collateral...
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Fishy Fish Stats
The Central Valley Project Improvement Act, a landmark federal law signed by President George H.W. Bush in the fall of 1992, set a goal of doubling the Bay-Delta watershed’s Chinook salmon runs from...
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