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Posts published in “Essays”

The Way It Works

A ragged 10-year-old boy is picking barefoot through an ocean of trash, patiently searching for anything of value that his family can turn into food or shelter. He steps on what turns out to be…

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…

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