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Category Archives: Column: Published Weekly in the Sonoma Index-Tribune
Simpleton at the Symposium
Conferences and conventions are a superb way to pretend one is working when one is actually not. I’m not sure what actually occurs at conferences apart from the formation of ad hoc drinking clubs and complaints about crappy wi-fi. Certainly some business is getting done, that is if business is charting an up-tick in one’s [...]
Ransom Note Generator (redux)
My bookkeeper had good and bad news. I asked for the bad news first, like they do in the movies, figuring the good news would counterpoint the bad with something pithy and ironic. And we’d all laugh.
Or at least nervously titter. It went like this: “The bad news is you’re profitable.” I wasn’t taken entirely [...]
Shaken and Blurred
Among the more prevalent literary clichés are those that trade on writers and their relationship to alcohol. When writers write about drinking it is often in prose wearied by mock-heroics, broad bombast and the pale insight achieved by groping toward the light at the end of a bottle.
Even the best writers writing about booze often [...]
‘Twas a Wine Country Christmas
Regional variations on Christmas classics fascinate me. In parts of England, for example, the eleventh of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” sees “Eleven dames-a-dancing” rather than piper’s piping, which sounds a lot more interesting (unless I’m missing something). Albeit, the term “dame,” for me, evokes the kaleidoscopic burlesque of the Barbary Coast and buxom gun [...]
Posted in Column: Published Weekly in the Sonoma Index-Tribune Tagged christmas, sonoma, twas 1 Comment
Thanksgiving in Blue
Last year, I wrote a piece on the so-called “turducken,” the culinary abomination that shares its theme music with the Frankenstein movies, and received the following note from my Washingtonian pal Geoffrey Cain, who opined:
“If you are going to write about the turducken, you should remember to mention the Brazilian turdukenaconda. A duck is force [...]
Also posted in Blog Tagged cherokee, native american, pilgrim, plymoth, smurf, squanto, thanksgiving 3 Comments
Leaf Blowers Must Die
Living in Sonoma during this time of year is like living in a postcard. Not the “Wish you were here” variety, which, in most languages translates as “neener-neener-neener,” but the ones purchasable at the visitors bureau that depict our rural countryside, braided with vineyards in autumnal hues that would make every crayon in the box [...]
Sonoma Faces off on Facebook
In another of my social media-to-print experiments (OK, admittedly, Twitter interview made only partial sense – least of all to those on Twitter), I decided to “crowd-source” my column. Crowd-sourcing is like out-sourcing but instead of farming my column out to an emerging economy like India or East Petaluma, one taps the so-called “wisdom of [...]
Best Little Horror House in Sonoma
Given the annual rate of attrition of the kids who trick or treat my house, this year I expect, at most, two – the one’s from next door whose parents make them come over for the sake of being polite.
The low turnout baffles my wife who thrills at the sight of little one’s garbed as [...]
Also posted in Blog Tagged emmy kaplan, emmy's spaghetti shack, halloween, m&ms, the cannoli, white zombie 1 Comment
Sonoma’s Underground Public Art Movement