Columns

Unexpected hiccup

Lots of meetings and talk going on in our community regarding Wikiup Commons. Let me start by first giving you some important dates.  

Latino music playing in the vineyards as the sun rises, men shouting to be heard over roaring engines as their hands move with the precision of a surgeon with scalpel cutting one cluster then quickly another. Trucks barreling along narrow country roads delivering grapes prior to the heat of day. The entire county smelling of grape aromas — earthy, fruity, sweet and floral smells permeate the air. 

Obsessions

Huginn and Munnnin

I live in the outskirts of Sebastopol, so the so-called “mag crews” don’t appear at my front door. But when we lived in Hermosa Beach, they were a several-times-a-week fixture. Those hucksters were always young, always vulnerable, and always poised for the “kill” of getting you to sign up for unneeded magazines. Writer/director Andrea Arnold has fleshed out a New York Times article by Ian Urbana into American Honey, the 162-minute-long, sex, drugs and hip-hop filled, cross-country odyssey taken by Star (Sasha Lane), a luckless teen desperate to escape her groping father and the 24-hours-a-day responsibility of caring for her younger siblings. Star finds her means of escape in a Walmart by flirting with Jake (Shia LeBoeuf) the scruffy-looking oldest member of a group of teens who are escorted out by store security. “If you want a job,” Jake tells Star, “be at the Motel 6 tomorrow morning.”

I’ve never been much of a fan of reality TV. But now that there is a new show called “The White House,” I find myself becoming one of those people who stop to watch a car wreck.