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Posts published by “Jeff Costello”

A Nation Of Lone Nuts

How exceptional is the U.S.A.? Shall we count the ways? It is definitely exceptional that we can expect, on a regular basis, guys with multiple guns to walk into schools, shopping malls and even restaurants…

Road Notes: North For The Winter Redux

Early morning, a donut shop in Ukiah. I half-stumble from my room at Motel 6, hoping a large coffee will set my internal latitude and longitude back to coordinated. It helps. In the donut shop…

The Grand Tour

Tourists in California are missing a great opportunity. Where else can you travel north-south on either of two major highways and be so close to so many prisons - pardon me, correctional facilities - some in plain sight. And not just any prisons. Famous prisons, notorious prisons, prisons immortalized in song.

Labor Day 2012

John Stephens on the rich person's view of the poor: “They just can't understand what a terrible burden it is to have money.” I’m a semi-regular at a restaurant/cafe in Sausalito. It’s convenient, the food’s…

The Crackpot Files

Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society.  — Thomas (“Mental illness is a myth”) Szasz   “…lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of [society].”  — Ken Kesey,…

Pete Seeger’s Contributions

Pete Seeger may well be the very essence of the earnest, self-serious folk singer. He seems to have built the mold. After a half-century of harassment by everyone from the local KKK in the small Hudson River Valley town where he lives to the House Un-American Activities Commission in the 50s, to J. Edgar Hoover himself, you could say Seeger has a right to be serious.

Memo To White Liberals

We no longer see or hear the terms Jewess or Negress, which are insulting in that people are put on a level with animals (tigress, lioness). The suffix in general is old news. (Plus, no…

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