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Posts published in “Essays”

The Stony Lonesome: ‘It Could Be Verse’

First off, Constant Reader, I would like to assure you that I have no idea what a "below standard boatswain door for grande" is, and…

Palmer, Alaska

When Marcia and I got together eight years ago, we embarked on a fascinating process of making a studio album with the help of Peter Temple, the recording savant of Albion. I played guitar and piano and sang, Marcia wrote and arranged and played gorgeous cello parts for our original tunes, and the late great Amunka Davila supplied tasty percussion. The project took several months longer than I thought it would and used up most of the money I’d set aside for such creative endeavors.

Teaching In Mendocino County, 1934

The following are excerpts taken from letters I wrote home to my parents during the first year and a half that I taught in Sherwood Valley School in Mendocino County. This was my second year of teaching but the first year being on my own away from home. I boarded with Lou and Ethel James. Ethel James was the clerk of the school board. My salary was $100 a month. I paid $30 a month room and board. I had no car so I walked to and from school about 1.8 miles each way.

Mendocino Talking: Janie Sheppard

Janie is an attorney who spent many years working in the Federal Government in Washington D.C., drafted our anti-GMO initiative Measure H, and tried to impeach Dick Cheney.

The Mind Is a Terrible Thing

I thought this might be an opportune time for me to weigh in on some of today's pressing A/B controversies; you know, the "this versus…

Outage

The power was out in our neck of the Mendocino woods for nearly five days last week. Can we blame PG&E? I do. With the money they’ve stolen charging millions of people ten dollars a month not to have stupid, er, smart meters, combined with the billions of dollars they spend annually responding to multi-day power outages all over the state, they could easily have afforded by now to bury all their power lines and be done with outages forever. But that’s not how monopoly capitalism works.

Resiliency Starts Here

The 32nd Annual Winter Abundance Workshop, known by regulars as the Seed and Scion Exchange, was held this year at the Mendocino County fairgrounds in…

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