Wake: Eulogy for a Small Farm

Judy couldn’t remember where the key was—or wouldn’t. She claimed that the leaking roof had made the house unsafe. Our second cousin now owns the family farm, which has belonged to our family since the early to mid-1800s. Our great-grandfather, Thomas Pope, built the house in the 1890s after a good corn crop. His wife,… Read more »

Politics in a Traumatized World: Dystopia and the Creative Imagination, October 18-20, 2024

“If human life is unsustainable as we have become accustomed to living it, it is likely up to survivors—people who have stared into the abyss of catastrophe—to imagine and enact new ways of living.” ..Robert Jay Lipton, author whose subject has been holocaust, mass violence, and renewal in the 20th and 21st century. How do… Read more »

Goddess Speed, Norma Churchill!!

Norma Jean Churchill, a cherished member of our family for the past three decades, departed from this world in the early hours of April 10, 2024. At the age of 92, she passed away in the comfort of her own bed, in her home by her beloved Las Gallinas tidal creek, just as she had… Read more »

Ode to Kali

This Spring’s beauty has never been greater. I know, for some of us elders, this is how it feels every spring—a green fuse filled with fire of blooming: California buttercup and shooting star and purple cups of Douglas Iris and now spires of lupin, tiny whispers of trillium, and blue-eyed grass. Such delicate, sturdy presences… Read more »

I am Unmarrying

An addendum to the epilogue of Fruits of Eden: Field Notes Napa Valley 1991-2021. I am “unmarrying” — a term different from “widowed.” “Widowed” is a dead end. Un-marrying is a fluid process. Donald and I were married for 27 !/2 years, years we grew together, combining our households, finances, and children, then building a… Read more »

What happened to the old Farm Bureau?

The following was first published as a Letter to the Editor in the Napa Valley Register on March 21, 2023. Twenty minutes into the Farm Bureau’s membership Zoom session on Groundwater last week, my screen went black, and then a message appeared that the “host,” in this case, the executive director of the Farm Bureau,… Read more »