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Posts published in “Essays”

Why 100 People Love Anderson Valley

Always looking for things to write about, it came to me that it would be a good idea to ask others what they loved about Anderson Valley. Unfortunately I told people the deadline for responding…

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Something New to Sell

“Everyone always has the fanciest reasons for what they do.” –Lillian Hellman The headline atop the Times sports page June 21 was a sanctimonious lie: “In Homage to Mays and the Negro Leagues, MLB Heads…

The Long, Hot Summer

“Vladimir Putin is clearly losing the War in Iraq.” — “Joe Biden,” US President Russian Revolution Two kicked off the long, hot summer freak show of 2023. Unlike Russian Revolution One (1917), which lasted over…

Prigozhin’s March On Moscow

In late May, the pro-Kremlin political PR hack Konstantin Dolgov published a startling interview with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the commander of the Wagner private military company. Prigozhin said that the entire “denazification and demilitarisation” rationale behind…

Bowl Of Borscht

Flying Oakland to Burbank meant saving a couple hundred bucks. So headquarters could spring for a cab, instead of the Muni/BART/shuttle journey. A Georgian — not the Atlanta kind — arrived to haul me across…

White Man’s Deadly Encounters With Indians

by Fremont Older, Editor of the San Francisco Call Bulletin, 1931 It happened at the moment of my deepest depression that A.E. Sherwood, my stepfather's brother, suggested to me that I could preempt 160 acres…

Road Trips In A Van

Much of my childhood was spent in a van, especially the 1968 Chevy that my parents drove across California, Nevada and Arizona. I remember feeling trapped and bored on those trips, spending countless hours staring…

Ellsberg’s Crucial Role: The Unquiet American

In eulogies Daniel Ellsberg is defined as a “whistleblower,” but he didn’t really break the news about “our” role in Vietnam to US Americans who had attended a teach-in or read about the war in Ramparts,…

‘Think I’ll Quit Having Tumors’

Quit drinking the other day, but knowing me, it won’t be long before I hit the bottle again. It’s my pattern.  That means I’ll soon be drinking again. Hallelujah.  I started in college and have…

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