While people pontificate about what should or shouldn’t happen to PG&E after this recent potential disaster and power shut off, it was a good wake-up call for small rural communities on emergency disaster planning. Comptche is a quintessential small town with a store with one gas pump, post office, school, church, and a volunteer fire […]
Pyrotechnics: the art, craft and science of fireworks. Want to see it done incredibly? Go to Burning Man where people LOVE to blow up things. So first, some background on fireworks. This is where your memory of high school chemistry comes in handy. Be it a sparkler or a fireworks display over a stadium the […]
I’m sure readers everywhere pick up a book they remember reading a decade ago, are interested enough to read it again, and remain firm in their belief that it’s STILL a great read. For example “The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California” by Curt Gentry written in 1968. Combining the history and […]
“What’s a Limb Cast?” Any geologist or rockhound can tell you. If you bury any or all of a tree in hot volcanic ash the wood will burn away but leave a cast, or impression, that then fills in over the ages with agate. The agate can come in a variety of colors and the […]
While not falling into the “Lost Cause” category, attending a County Planning Commission meeting when you KNOW your side is going to lose, eats up a day and leaves you disappointed. I have nothing but respect for the commissioners who sit through day after day of pleading and cajoling over whose side is right. Word […]
In what’s becoming an annual tradition the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino is hosting a book sale of history books Saturday May 25 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the west porch. Book donations come from excess materials in the archives combined with books donated by local historians Bruce Levene, Thad Van Buren and […]
While praise and glory has been heaped on California governors and biographies written about them, standing behind almost every one of them was a First Lady supporting that man. I picked up a self-published book recently called “The First Ladies of California” written by Lynn Cook and Janet LaDue, who were docents at the state […]
Every few years my husband and I save enough to go on a tour with our favorite travel group, Mountain Outin’. The tour director finds unusual and wonderful places to visit with rail travel to get you there and back. This year the Winter Rail Escapade was to Wisconsin. Wisconsin? In the snowiest winter that […]
You never know what you’ll turn up at a book sale. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. While working on the Mendocino County history I’m writing I was thrilled to pick up “Mineral Commodities of California” (1957) for $1. In it were 736 slightly musty pages of geology and geography and references to Mendocino […]
Spend 40 years driving by the same interesting-looking place along Highway 20 and saying “…Some year we should check that out…” and finally we got it together and took time to check out Sutter Buttes. Nicknamed the “World’s Smallest Mountain Range” the Buttes rise 2,000’ over the Central Valley and you wonder what the heck […]
Anyone living in Anderson Valley or on the coast has driven by this location a gazillion times and probably noticed a small sturdy stucco building