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Posts published in “Essays”

Fong Wan’s Herbs

You never know what you'll run across. While researching other matters I found this item in a March, 1925 publication, with the headline, “Woman Turned to Stone.” Who could resist reading on to learn about…

The Smoking Life

Advertising has come a long way since the days when they'd just brashly trumpet the superiority of the product in a general way, saying things like: Buy this doohickey right now. It will improve your…

Mad Marx

London’s Bridge Theatre opened its steel and glass doors late last year on the South Bank of the Thames. The theatre takes its name from nearby Tower Bridge. The large foyer gives onto the walk…

Brocialists

In his book On Television, Pierre Bourdieu warns against the twin temptations of historical analysis: everything is totally changed and unlike anything that went before, and nothing has changed over the last thousand years. Nowhere…

First People

History is long, but memory is short. Anderson Valley’s early settlers may have arrived in the 1850s, but the valley’s history began millennia earlier, with the coming of Native Americans. These First People left little to indicate their presence here, but they were here.

The Coming End of North Coast Cannabis Culture

No, it’s not the end of cannabis in California. Not yet. Farmers and gardeners will be able to grow and harvest their own plants, if the weed isn’t for sale. From now on, however, the…

“Board Certified” & Board Chairs

At a November, 2017, Mendocino Coast District Hospital (MCDH) Board meeting, the Medical Staff Manager made a statement that included the claim that the hospital's physicians “are 100% board certified.” A few moments later he…

Deciphering Lumberjack Lingo

My father-in-law Andrew Tahja started his working life as a whistle punk. What does that mean? On a logging show often workers cannot see each other and someone off to the side, who can see…

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