Resident, business owner: Having personal insurance meant keeping my business open The rocky road to implementation of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, took another turn last week with the extension of the March 31 enrollment deadline for those who have had trouble signing up. But even as most media coverage of the ACA […]
Review: Conchita, the Count and the love story of the (19th) century
SOMETHING REMARKABLE HAPPENED RECENTLY at the Benicia Historical Museum while I was serving as a docent. A young Russian family arrived: mother, father, 1- and 2-year-old daughters. The father spoke English with a German accent and was a space science fellow at UC-Berkeley. They loved California history and had visited Fort Ross. The wife doted […]
U.S. Grant jailed in Benicia — a myth that needs debunking
THERE ARE SEVERAL VERSIONS OF THE STORY OF ULYSSES S. GRANT IN BENICIA. One legend and its variations have it that he was incarcerated, for drunkenness, in either the old Benicia Barracks guardhouse or the newer Benicia Arsenal guardhouse. Another myth relates that the “young lieutenant” was subjected to a “little trial” in which, according […]