Kevin is the Napa Valley Register's city editor. His personal column about the adventures of everyday life in Napa runs every Sunday.
You would not have wanted to walk in my shoes in recent days. I was in an uphill fight to be serviced by our local pharmacies.
With a four-acre vineyard planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, I am the Lord of the Vine. From budding to harvesting, the vineyard’s growth cycle plays out under my watchful gaze.
The night before my scheduled flight to my brother’s funeral, I expected terrible insomnia, and that’s what I got. I lay awake, brain on fire, as the hours crawled by.
My life has been an emotional jumble.
My 69-year-old younger brother died last Sunday.
October is the harbinger month. It gives us Halloween, then propels us toward Thanksgiving and the glories of December.
We are not urban warriors. We do not ride mass transit. No one is more car-centric than we are.
I was dubious about the printed and word-of-mouth reviews of the Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.”
Monday was my day of reckoning with the DMV.
Relations between the Courtneys and a neighbor hit a rough patch in August. As is so often the case, the crux of the dispute was music.
A smoke dome has hung over the Napa Valley for much of this summer.
Gotta love Costco for great prices on bulk purchases of practically anything, but can you trust this warehouse club with your health?
Some of the biggest names in Napa Valley journalism were at my place last Sunday afternoon.
A shocker came in the mail last week. A water bill of $470.
Not sleeping so great these days. Got DMV on the brain.
I should have known something was up. When my phone rang that Saturday afternoon, it was my son Dennis.
I won’t bore you with my sore neck, which has been bedeviling me since February. You probably have a sore neck of your own.
Call me a narcissist, but I’ve always been flattered when birds choose our property to build their spring nests.
Home ownership is glorified, but there is a downside: The maintenance.
Let’s talk about Napa High’s search for a new mascot.
What are the Courtneys up to this summer? We’re building a meadow.
I woke up this spring to the fact that my U.S. passport had expired. And not recently, but years ago.
With housing affordability roiling Napa and coastal California, I look at my own situation with a measure of guilt.
The whole world was at Napa Valley Expo having the time of its life last weekend. Cheryl thought we should have been at BottleRock too.
Elvis and I go way back.
When I get into my car to go to work, my windows are generally covered with dew. Heaven forbid someone’s in my path as I back up and out of my driveway.
Napa is changing. More affluence, yet more people struggling to make ends meet. Last weekend I got to sample the glitz, then the acts of a man desperate to earn a dollar.
I moved around a lot as a kid, I didn’t make friends easily. No one from grades K-12 is still in my orbit.
While some Napa County residents debate the future of our oak woodlands before voting on Measure C this June, another tree debate has been going on in the Courtney house.
Most days my neighborhood looks quiet enough. Lots are larger than the city average. People have room to flex their muscles, run cattle, grow grapes, whatever.
Having survived a rare April “atmospheric river,” all kinds of people were strolling on my street last Sunday, enjoying the sunshine.
Dig into old newspaper archives and there’s no telling what you will find.
I was probably one of Vallerga’s worst customers.
I’m a newspaper guy. I start my day early.
I won’t lie to you. I was feeling punchy after working two long days covering the unbelievably sad events at the Vets Home a week ago.
Normally I don’t have sleep issues. I’m not saying I sleep like a baby, but I do sleep.
I entered the Army as a second lieutenant in October 1968, the year that America’s involvement in the Vietnam War reached almost a half-million troops. I rejoiced when I was assigned to train on Nike Hercules missiles, even then an obsolete air defense system. There were no Nikes in Vietnam.…
Let’s talk cats.
Last week’s column on my response to being panhandled while eating lunch at a Register picnic table created something of a stir.
One of the best things about the Register’s newish Soscol location is our redwood grove. It’s small — just three trees and a picnic table bordered by sidewalk— but surprisingly lovely.
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Cheryl and I were playing Santa Claus. We were giving away stuff so we can begin a badly needed makeover of our living room.
What a nightmare! The local radio station invited me to sit down with a talk show host and blather for a solid hour about myself and 2018’s likely big stories.
We are city residents. We live on a city lot, not in a forest, yet our tree issues are endless. The last few years they’ve kept Cheryl awake at night.
You would think that the Courtneys would have had their fill of home improvement projects after living above their garage for more than a year while the back of their house was rebuilt.
I had an exceptional Christmas. I managed not to go into my traditional holiday funk.
This was the most feline Christmas of my life. From start to finish, house cats stole the show.
What’s a proper Christmas meal?
The Register ran an online gallery of photos last month showing how downtown Napa looked in the years just before I got here in 1973.
Our evening at the Uptown started out well enough. There was no hint of the misstep that was to come.
Was I rushing? Of course I was rushing. Isn’t that when bad things always happen?
My view of people who obsess on keeping their cars looking immaculate is close to that of the characters in Sheryl Crow’s song, “All I Wanna Do.”
Runners are always breaking down. Last winter was my worst malfunction ever. I lost three months of jogging because of a sore knee that refused to heal.
I’m the loneliest movie watcher on the planet. No one sees the movies that I see.
After our October trial by fire, I’d say Napa’s return to normalcy is still very much a work in progress, never mind this weekend’s rain.
I tried growing a beard in the 1990s, but the experiment was a disaster.
I’ve had two obsessions these past two weeks. Number one, The Fires — how to survive them, how to report them, how to breathe their vapors (Was I stupid to jog twice, unmasked, in soupy conditions?).
Napa is good at handling disasters. It comes from practice.
My west Napa neighborhood is as quiet as they come. That’s why last week’s letter arrived like a bombshell.
In last week’s column I wrote most favorably about going with Cheryl to Shasta to attend a reunion with her childhood girlfriends.
Last spring Cheryl announced that several girlfriends from her childhood in Southern California — people I had virtually no knowledge of — were planning a three-day reunion, possibly on a houseboat on Lake Shasta.