Boonville, California, the town which provides a home for the Anderson Valley Advertiser — the newspaper you’re reading — has a population of about one thousand people. I know three of Boonville’s citizens: Bruce Anderson,…
Posts published by “Jonah Raskin”
They’re demonized and exploited, revered for their youth and reviled simply because they’re young. They are today’s teenagers, the post-millennials, who came of age during Trump’s nightmare presidency, the flowering of the Black Lives Matter…
The anarchist, pacifist poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whom I knew for forty years was shy and introverted, even while he was a public figure who wanted to be recognized and appreciated as an artist. We performed…
It was a Pat Benatar kind of day, a day when I knew I would say, at least once, “Hit me with your best shot.” I was scheduled for a vaccination, my first, and I…
They were nearly all Isolatoes, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were!…
The other day, my housemate thought she saw flames on the adjoining property. She called the fire department in Cotati, California where we live. Two fire trucks arrived with fire fighters loaded for bear. The…
Many of the articles about cannabis that appear in the AVA are so chock full of bad news that they would depress even Julie Andrews, who plays Maria von Trapp, an eternal optimist, in the…
I was bad. I admit it and I’m sorry. On Thanksgiving, I joined a dozen or so friends and some strangers, too, for a feast. We sat outdoors on a farm. Sadly, we did not…