This year’s Humboldt County Grand Jury Report calls for an end to after-hours releases from the county’s jail facility between 9pm and 6am and finds that not returning indigent offenders to the locations where they…
Posts published in “Essays”
The other morning I answered the phone to the mellowed tones of a retiree named Bill who had somehow got hold of my number. “Hello, can I speak with Alexander Cockburn?” There was an alluring…
Each Kindle or electronic e-book owner in France buys an average of 4.6 books a year. In Italy, a country with a reputation of not being very honest, 4.4 is the average number for the…
An early August road trip heading east from the city of Ithaca in the middle of New York State to southern Vermont promises calm, pastoral progress. With farming in steep decline the forest is reclaiming…
I am a 21-year-old semi-adult and, being quite interested in me, I think often of my future. I have climbed to the top of youth and now have my fullest gaze at the adult world.…
August should be a month of adventure, entertainment and fun. For the last two, readers can't do much better than the Mendocino Theatre Company's production of The Graduate. If you're thinking, I've seen the Mike…
It is a strange condition: a historical phenomenon that is potentially a huge, world-changing revelation for mankind is trivialized and ridiculed by US mainstream culture — perhaps more than any other subject. The possibility that…
Village Building Convergence (VBC) activists and their supporters from Cittaslow Sebastopol, Transition, the Grange, Permaculture Skills Center, and other groups recently packed the City Council meeting of small town Sebastopol in semi-rural Sonoma County, Northern…
I was recently part of a group of Valley folks gathered to discuss issues in the Anderson Valley and to suggest some possible ways forward. This was all theoretical and at the behest of a…