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Posts published in “Essays”

Humboldt Humbled by Legalization

Although it's entitled "How Legalization Changed Humboldt County Marijuana," Emily Witt's article in the current New Yorker is not about new plant varieties but about new social realities.  She opens with an assertion sure to please her…

Remembering Last Summer

2018. California is disappearing in smoke and flames. Global warming sits on us like a smothering blanket. Out my window I see two fires and there are at least seventeen ongoing

Cemetery Voodoo

I appeared in front of the Russian River Cemetery District Board of Directors last week at their monthly meeting. I was ushered in to what must be their chapel. They had set up a table…

True Crime in the 1910s

For those who think stagecoaches went out with the turn of the twentieth century, think again. As late as the onset of World War I, while “Little Willie,” the first British tank, rolled out and…

Biloxi Days: The Barracks Visit

I arrived at Lackland Air Force Base outside of San Antonio for Officer Training School in November of 1967. For reasons known only to my recruiter in Fresno, I was two weeks early for 90…

Pops’ Grandson

My wife and I were back at Evans Stadium in Cal Berkeley on Mother’s Day, April 12, mainly to watch Cal first baseman

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