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Posts published in “Essays”

Big

Getting my first computer was inspired by a visit to AVA regular Jim Gibbons, in the hills outside of Willits. He was on solar power and had a Mac Plus hooked up to an inverter…

HumCo’s Pot Chaos

Today, more than six months after the deadline to apply, the Humboldt County Planning Department has received fewer than 200 completed cannabis cultivation permit applications from the entire county. That means that more than 2,000 permit…

Things To Come

As our politicos creep deeper into a legalistic wilderness hunting for phantoms of Russian collusion, nobody pays attention to the most dangerous force in American life: the unraveling financialization of the economy. Financialization is what…

Pot Economics 101

Ever since the legalization of med-pot in the fall of 2015 and the voter-approved legalization of so-called recreational pot (“rec-pot”) last November, I’ve used this column and air time on my KPFN radio program talking…

Budget Day in Fort Bragg

The City of Fort Bragg convened at Town Hall for a full day budget workshop bright and early last Wednesday morning. They had coffee but only a modest bowl of grapes to go with it.…

The Adventures of Thomas Crapo

While the current versions of newspapers in Fort Bragg and Mendocino rarely cover stories outside of the myopically local, their progenitor, William Heeser, reported on news from around the state, the nation, and the world…

The Most Powerful Man In The World Redux

The logic of the rich? - want more, get more. But there's never enough. Towers all over the world with your name emblazoned in big gold letters, proclaiming, extolling celebrating...ME. If billions of dollars and a constant torrent of publicity and attention don't satisfy, what is left? Power - what else? Whenever it was that the president of the United States started being called the Most Powerful Man in the World, as a kid who had grown up reading Superman comics, I knew, felt strongly, that something wasn't right about this. POTUS had become a comic strip character. Somewhere I had read that the desire for a position of authority and power ought to be the primary disqualification for the job.

Nothin’ Doin’

I am a busy man. Busy, busy, busy. Beaver, bee, one-armed paperhanger: choose your preferred symbolic figure for a chap in a condition of constant occupation. Not complaining, mind you, just saying, and in fact…

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