Like a bird on a wire Like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free — Leonard Cohen Caron McCloud flew peacefully and powerfully into her future at…
Posts published in “Essays”
Alexander Cockburn, in a piece he recycled for publication the year he died, wrote that he “learned to loathe Animal Farm” while at prep school because “any arguments for socialism would be met with brays of…
That morning following the shootout at Rattlesnake Creek, Doc and Andy Bowman found the tracks of their prey's mounts on the hill to the east. They had gone but a quarter mile farther on the…
In 1918, the world experienced a pandemic caused by a particularly virulent strain of the influenza A virus. Over the course of two years, it went around the world in four big waves, then faded. …
Anytime I get mail from the government I consider it important and a little threatening. So, the latest mail is from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This is my reply to Mr. Russell D.…
Seven years ago I moved into the off grid house I designed in the subdivision of 135 ten-acre lots called Rancho Navarro. Every morning I listen to songbirds while strolling among the redwoods. On April…
J.S. Bach’s two musical confrontations with taxes span his career composing and performing cantatas. Nur jedem das Seine (To Each His Own!), BWV 163, dates from 1715, the year after Bach had been promoted from…
A long road paved with good intentions has brought Mendocino County to a hellish land of marijuana cultivation called Covelo. Those good intentions were mostly lies, but well-intended ones. Maybe. After all the years of…
Support for a traffic roundabout at Bush and Low Gap seems confined to those who work in government, which is sufficient cause for skepticism among the rest of us. City officials recently resurrected plans for…