Tom & Huck Hit The Beach
Early sunny morning, probably a school day; we are about 15 years old. You walk a few doors down and knock on my bedroom window, wearing just swim trunks, t-shirt, flip-flops, carrying swim fins....
View ArticleOzzie & Harriet Hit The Beach
My first real job might have been the best I ever had. Armed with a brand-new first driver's license, I delivered groceries and booze to the stars. Or, at least, a couple of them. Besides John Wayne,...
View ArticleMerle Haggard, Hippie Icon?
Merle Haggard died last week, up in his beloved Mount Shasta region, on his 79th birthday. His son Ben wrote this online: "A week ago dad told us he was gonna pass on his birthday, and he wasn't wrong....
View ArticleVexxed At ‘Vaxxed’: Like an Infection
An email just arrived in my inbox recently titled "The Most Controversial Film in the Country — VAXXED — Set to Open in The San Francisco Bay Area this Friday!" Why it was not in my junk email box I am...
View ArticleMy Brief Career As A Karate Kid
On my way to the local junior college, where I attended classes for one semester while trying to figure out where better to go, I'd ride my small motorcycle up a main drag linking our beach town to the...
View ArticleThe Right To Die At The Wedge
One of the most famous waves on the planet is called simply “the Wedge." Or rather, one of the most infamous. It's in Newport Beach, Orange County, Southern California, right where two long jetties...
View ArticleMemorial Day Realities
My father worked the “industrial” side of what Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex. He ran a division of a major automobile corporation that made weaponry, or parts thereof, for...
View ArticleFestival Time Is Here
The third weekend in June each year means music festival time in Boonville, in the form of the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival. The SNWMF is so titled as it began 23 years ago in the foothills of...
View ArticleDisarm The Deranged
When the twin towers fell on 911, at first it was thought that as many as 10,000 people might have been inside. A national call for blood donors went out in case there were many injured. By the time I...
View ArticleSierra Fest 2016
There was a striking man walking up and down 128 all weekend with a goat on a leash. At least he looked like a man, wearing some kind of goatskin-looking coat. The goat was real, and at one point had...
View ArticleThe Man Behind The Warm Spiritual Greetings
Attentive/obsessive AVA readers might recognize the name Craig Louis Stehr - he has long been one of the paper's most frequent and loyal correspondents. His missives usually tell of his travels around...
View ArticleNoble Zimmy Hits The Coast
I shouldn't be writing this. Hell, I shouldn't be writing anything right now. Seems whatever I say or sing or write or do, somebody's gotta serve themselves by having some big opinion about it being...
View ArticleGive Thanks For The Golden State
For over a month now, at least half of the nation has been suffering from PTSD: Pre-Trump Stress Disorder. Our nation has self-inflicted a very serious sickness - actually, a relapse of a recurring,...
View ArticleMelody With Fish
Fishing was a big part of my father's life, from his childhood in Minnesota onward, and he made it part of mine too. By the time I was born we lived right on the beach in Southern California and my...
View ArticleInaugurHowl
I saw the worst candidate of any generation elected by a minority, lying shouting tweeting, dragging our poor nation into the swampiest of backlashes with a hostile takeover of democracy,
View ArticleVaccines & Trumpism
Let's talk about vaccines for a bit — even though doing so in public forums always risks going down a rabbit hole of anti-science, conspiracy theories, and endless random nuttiness.
View ArticleDrug Ed 101: Just Say Know
For a time I provided 'drug education' in public and private schools. As an outsider consultant, this was often tacit recognition that nobody on staff could or wanted to do it, and that the students...
View ArticleWorld Music Fest 2017
The Sierra Nevada World Music Festival (SNWMF) relocated to Boonville in 2006, after operating in the Sierra foothills since 1994, making this the 12th year here. After some challenges with an extreme...
View ArticleMusic Never Dies
Ahh, those Anderson Valley mornings. At the Mosswood before things heated up it was calm and happy, the smiling lovely staff providing truly wonderful coffee, and there were open seats out front. I...
View ArticleSNWMF 2018: A Quarter Century of Music
This year marks the 25th annual version of the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, and its 13th year in Boonville. Begun in 1994 in the foothills of the mountain range it's named for, the organizers...
View ArticleGet Up, Stand Up (And… Dance)
Standing on stage in front of thousands of people can be a kind of out-of-body experience, especially if one is essentially shy in public. But on the big stage at the Sierra Nevada World Music...
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