Loves Labours Lost in Sonoma?

I’m on record and I’ll say it again, Sonoma has the nation’s best small town newspaper, the inestimable Sonoma-Index Tribune. And the best part of that twice-weekly paper is the Crime Report. Yes, the editors of the IT have taken the mundane police blotter and turned it into Pulitzer-worthy High Art. More often than not, the roundup of petty thefts, public...

In Praise of Small Town Media

Gossip by Norman Rockwell Back up in Sonoma, and after only three days away, I’m anxious to catch up on the news. “The news?” you say. “I thought I remembered you are living in a barn with no TV, barely any radio reception and spotty cell coverage. Where are you getting your news? You know, you can’t get MSNBC or BBC America without cable.” I do...

Free to Be You and Me. Or NOT.

There was a recent dust-up over here involving The Pioneer Woman, the enormously successful cookin’, photographin’, homeschoolin’ Oklahoma blogger who’s built her brand as an Aw-Shucks country girl wife of a cattle rancher. I’m not going to weigh in on the controversy. Enough’s been said about that. But what struck me, in the course of the fall-out,...

Catcher on the Mississippi

Illustration of Huck Finn by E. W. Kemble from 1884 first edition The announcement of J.D. Salinger’s death has me thinking about my favorite alienated, wandering adolescent searching for truth in a corrupt world. I’m not talking about Holden Caulfield. Caulfield is just a snarky, overprivileged preppie starring in what is surely one of the most overrated novels in the...

The Great Panic Harvest of 2009

Mark Twain said: “Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Good point. And I wish someone had taken action on this terrible season back in May when it just wouldn’t warm up and wouldn’t stop raining. With a few scattered periods of hot, hot weather, it’s been mostly cooler and wetter than a normal season in Sonoma. And...

The Club That’s Made for You and M...

Are you not a joiner because you hate rules and regulations? Having difficulty finding an organization that marries diverse interests — such as history and drinking? Do you, as did Groucho Marx, maintain that you wouldn’t belong to any club that would have you? Then have I got an organization for YOU. It’s The Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus and...