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Posts published in “Essays”

The U.S. Mail

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.…

The Old Warrior

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…

Bach at Tax Time

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…

In Covelo, Harsh Realities Setting In

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…

My Kind Of Town, Ukiah Is

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…

Richard Nixon, Jews & Marijuana

What is about Jews and marijuana? That’s what Richard Nixon asked H. R. (Bob) Halderman 50-years ago, on May 26, 1971 to be precise. The White House tapes recorded Nixon saying, “There’s a funny thing,…

Claud Cockburn’s ‘Double Personality’

In his autobiography, I, Claud…, Cockburn describes being recruited by the Daily Worker in late 1936: “It was about this time that Mr. Pollitt, Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, whom I had never met, was…

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