On the violence spectrum — being a propensity for, attraction to, or likelihood of erupting in same — 0 being Gandhi-like peacefulness and 6 being raging, bloodthirsty berserker — I would say I clock in at…
Posts published in “Essays”
The elephant’s not even in the room, which is why the 2016 election campaign is such a soap opera. The elephant outside the room is named Discontinuity. That’s perhaps an intimidating word, but it is…
(Excerpts from the book "Then and Now: An Anderson Valley Journey" by Wes Smoot & Steve Sparks. Available at local stores. All proceeds go to the AV Museum and Historical Society.) The photo below, taken in…
Merle Haggard died last week, up in his beloved Mount Shasta region, on his 79th birthday. His son Ben wrote this online: "A week ago dad told us he was gonna pass on his birthday,…
During the battle to save the pristine salmon and steelhead habitat of Headwaters Forest in 1998, I got a phone call one morning from Mike Sherwood, then the California Director of the Sierra Club. He…
So I’m driving home from my acupuncture treatment and I come to the stoplight at the south end of Fort Bragg and here are a dozen people on the west side of the highway with signs saying Honk For Bernie, Volunteer for Bernie, Learn About Bernie, and I’m honking my little old horn, and the people are smiling and waving, and the excellent effects of my acupuncture treatment are amplified by a release of endorphins as I imagine Bernie Sanders becoming President of the Unites States and millions of people, old and young, black and brown and white, who have been disenfranchised for their entire lives finally having someone leading the country who wants to help them.
The mystery is at last revealed: why does the field of candidates for president score so uniformly low in trust, credibility, likability? Why are there no candidates of real substance, principle, and especially of real…
Saturday afternoon the blusters of the North plains blasted the Ohio valley relentlessly. Our chickens loitered on the leeward sides of buildings, with sustained gusts maintaining a minimum of 30 MPH for hours, speeding up…
As I write this, we are smack dab in the midst of March Madness — the NCAA basketball tournament, for those of you disinclined to the sporting life, not pollen induced insanity — and I…