After watching Judas and the Black Messiah, I called John Woodford for a reality check. In the summer of 1968 Woodford, then 27, was a staff writer at Ebony magazine in Chicago. His proposals for…
Posts published by “Fred Gardner”
March 3, 2021 — When Ferlinghetti died I thought maybe I should write what I knew about Shig’s accusation. But maybe I shouldn’t. Why tarnish the reputation of a man everybody respected (including me)? I…
Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is the great granddaughter of Leon Trotsky. She once told a mutual acquaintance that she still recalled the old man's jackets hanging in…
I don't know which chemicals are released in which parts of the brain, but there's a pleasurable rush when you find yourself in agreement with someone who has been observing the same scene from a…
Last week’s adulatory piece on Carl Hart’s book “Drug Use for Grown-Ups” evoked disagreement from AVA reader Terry Miller. Her comment —”A horrible horrible book by a man who should not be teaching students”— was…
Dr. Carl Hart, a neuroscientist on the Columbia University faculty, is the most audaciously radical thinker in the drug-policy-reform field, and the bravest. His new book was mildly praised the New York Times Book Review…
Joe D. Goldstrich, MD, is 82 and sharp as a tack. In 1963, as a fourth-year medical student on the neurosurgical service at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, he was one of the doctors in the…
Terence Hallinan was always a bit mystified by Willie Brown’s animosity. Reading a headline in the Chronicle like “Brown excoriates Hallinan, other big-mouth critics,” he would shake his head in sad disbelief. When he said…
In November 2000, Al Gore and George W. Bush were running for President, and so was Ralph Nader. On the Saturday before the election Ross Mirkarimi, Nader's California campaign manager, called me at home to…