Tag: california

Two Lives in a Small Town

The following, in Shonnie Brown’s “Neighbors” column, appeared in The Healdsburg Tribune, our local weekly, on February 9, 2012. [Most of the images were not in the original.]

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Ann, born and raised in Casper, Wyoming, has the dubious distinction of attending high school with both Dick and Lynne Cheney and participating in student government with Dick. Dick, who Ann recalls as being “good looking” back then, wrote “I’ll be your friend forever” in Ann’s yearbook.

Ann attended a Catholic college in Denver and then got married — resulting in a breakup and three kids. She returned to college, putting herself through law school, and then became a New Jersey prosecutor. She moved to the Bay Area in 1984 and Continue reading “Two Lives in a Small Town”

Silverado Squatters

RLS's Honeymoon CabinDo students still read Robert Louis Stevenson? Treasure Island? The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Or have cinema and television overtaken literature, the adaptation become the source, and the source forgotten?

Stevenson was a mainstay of my childhood, a lingering consequence of his immense Victorian popularity. I suggest that it was this popularity that removed him from today’s scholarly reading lists.

On a recent visit to Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, I came across a small monument that mentioned his honeymoon there in 1880 (he married a San Franciscan) and the short travelogue he wrote, Silverado Squatters. To be sure, the style is from another era, but it is witty and alive with observation and analysis.

Continue reading “Silverado Squatters”