The two attractive, forty-something women had looked forward to the annual Halloween party at the Gualala Hotel that Saturday night, but when they arrived at the hotel a little after 8pm, the merrymakers who would pack the place an hour later hadn’t arrived. Gina Jimenez, and her good friend Deborah “Debbie” Hicks, long-time residents of […]
Frank Cieciorka is the male half of Alderpoint’s only two-artist household and Karen Horn is the female half. Although their journeys to Humboldt County’s eastern frontier are as different as the art they make, the couple live harmoniously under one roof and work under two, Karen in her studio, Frank in his. By their own […]
Karen Horn and Frank Cieciorka arrived in Alderpoint by different paths, but paths much like those trod by many of us as we retreated north from the Bay Area at the close of the 1960’s. The relative serenity of the Northcoast has enabled both to focus their considerable abilities on their art. Karen Horn is […]
Dominic Affinito says he didn’t punch Fort Bragg City Councilman-elect Dan Gjerde repeatedly in the back and threaten to kill him Thursday, November 12th in the Fort Bragg City Hall at 1:30 in the afternoon. He says his encounter with Gjerde has been exaggerated, misunderstood. Besides which Gjerde started it. Six eyewitnesses and the Fort […]
Didn’t know the man myself, but by the time I arrived in Mendocino County in 1970, the Rev was already a local big shot. He was throwing big ecumenical dinners with everyone from the heavy hitters of Ukiah’s John Birch Society to disco libs swearing eternal brotherhood. Looking back on it, I realize Jones […]
Alexander Cockburn and Bruce Anderson, legitimate recipients of mailings from the American Association of Retired People, hiked the arduously magnificent Sinkyone Wilderness Trail last weekend in record time. The sprightly seniors got from Bear Harbor at the northwest tip of Mendocino County down the rugged coast trail to Usal in 25 hours, a mere 11 […]
If there’s an old, old timer in the house who remembers Hannah Piggott nee Hori, we would like to know more about this most intriguing Fort Bragg woman. In broad and often confusing outline, she was Japanese married to a well known and much sought after American jockey named Harry Piggott, who raced at least […]
By the time you read this our resident deputy, Craig Walker, is already policing the sedate streets of Moraga. Deputy Walker’s departure is a big loss for the Anderson Valley where he’d become a crucial member of our wildly diverse community. A ten-year resident of Philo, the popular deputy sheriff had successfully filled the huge […]
Two nights after we’d established our raucous brood in Mendocino County’s serene summer hills, not far from the unsuspecting hamlet of Boonville, we got our first lesson in the psycho-pathology of the pre-pube criminal, the immutable psycho-pathology of the pre-pube criminal. The delinquents occasionally acted like the children they were, and when they did we […]
Arturo Flores might be Boonville’s least known serial killer. In 1987, Flores would tell his friends that “all anglos should be exterminated.” Then he exterminated one. Maybe he’d exterminated others, too, but we knew from the cold, dead fact of Gregory Evans, a 27-year-old softball player from Rohnert Park, that Flores exterminated Evans because two […]
CalFire called it the Peach Fire. Locals, depending on their community seniority, called it either the Tarwater Hill Fire after an old timer family named Tarwater who lived at its foot, or the Octopus Mountain Fire, its more contemporary designation inspired by the landmark’s tentacled topography. When the fire broke out about 3:15 last Thursday […]