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Posts published in “Essays”

Fred Hampton’s Chicago

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…

Sam & Marguerite

It's time to get down to the biography of Sam and Marguerite Avery's life in Anderson Valley, 1946-77. In preparation I went back to my archives to find a copy of the local monthly newspaper,…

Clarence Ford’s Ride with Dr. Wheeler

After Dr. John F. Wheeler had been arrested as the suspected ringleader of four other men who ambushed a constable's posse, killing two civilians, the dentist faced an arraignment. Under a second day of questioning,…

Read No Evil

With PC outrage on the rise over several children’s books by the newly “racist” Dr. Seuss, I called up the Ukiah library to see if Dr. Seuss’s head might be next on the guillotine of…

Coming Soon, Flying Carpets

Today we explore the shabby, semi-shady spending schemes of our elected representatives who, failing repeatedly and learning nothing, plunge ahead with billion dollar projects you and I know are idiotic.  (One of) Jerry Brown’s follies…

The Hon. Thomas Langley Carothers

The terms in office at that time were for two years and he served one term (1875-1876). He did not hold a California State Bar number because State Bar numbers had not yet been developed…

Lawrence Ferlinghetti – A Veteran For Peace

In 1962 a group of San Francisco veterans of World War II and Korea - knowing the Viet Nam war was looming - marched unofficially at the end of the annual Veterans Day Parade under…

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