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 »
Sea Change in Napa County?
It has been three weeks now since that day we sat in the Napa County Board of Supervisors (BOS) chamber for the appeal hearing by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) of the Le Colline Vineyard project—the day that the Board of Supervisors crossed a line into a new world for Napa County. The CBD… Read more »
Wild and Feral Harbingers of Hope
While visiting Cologne, Germany, this month, I was surprised to see flocks of wild parrots skimming low over the waters of the Rhine before roosting in the large trees along the river’s edge. Parrots are not native to Germany but are probably descendants of pets that have escaped or been deliberately released, naturalizing in this… Read more »
Mother’s Day Memories: Sweet and Bittersweet
I am reprinting one of my favorite Mother’s Day posts. More and more I realize how much my mother’s and my grandmothers’ influences reach my own grandchildren today and perhaps, one day, their own. Mother’s Day Memories: Sweet, Bittersweet Every year Mother’s Day brings two big memories, both when I was a preteen, one sweet, one bittersweet…. 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 »
Acting for our Future Generations
Was 2014 only my awakening to the need for environmental activism in Napa County, or was it also a considerable citizen shift in consciousness? 2014 was the year Walt Ranch hit the public eye. I learned about Walt Ranch only when I sought help after new neighbors decided to plant vines in an ancient oak… Read more »
A Crystalline Hike in a Ancient Sparkling Forest
Last week, my grandsons Wesley, Sabien, and I visited the Petrified Forest near Calistoga, CA. We are in what Rudolf Steiner called the crystallization period, that fallow time between January 15 and February 15, when Earth is quiet and most receptive to the energies of the cosmos. Although I had not planned this timing, it… Read more »
“Christ”
Early in Donald’s and my marriage, we got a couple of pygmy goats, Natalie and Boris. As animals do, they stitched Donald and me into the fabric of our land. Each day we followed these little black psychopomps (yes, they led the way!) along deer trails through the oak and bay forest and into the… Read more »
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