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Posts published in “Essays”

Poultry Apocalypse

Sometime in April my neighbor walked over to the back corner of our place while we were stretching the plastic over our wooden greenhouse frame. He had plenty of guinea eggs, he said, also informing…

Pot Bad, Wine Good

Let's begin with some Q&A. In the 1990s, runaway cultivation of a mind-altering cash crop led to a spate of illegal surface water diversions from the streams and springs that feed the Russian River, as…

There Is Always a Point of Decision

“This is the point of decision,” a dear friend often says, in our deepest conversations. And, isn’t it always points or places in time that cycle over and over in our spirals of regret? That…

What To Expect with Marijuana Legalization

There's no way to really tell how much Colorado's recent population surge has to do with legalized cannabis. But some locals see a connection. One of the lead articles in the May 31 Denver Post…

The Stony Lonesome: A Modest Proposal

There are scourges, and then there are scourges. Dutch elm disease, the Golden Horde, AIDS, potato blight, Spanish flu, Japanese beetles, Nazism, Maroon 5, war, and the conquistadors have all done exemplary work in erasing…

The Tyranny of the Local

The waiters and waitress at my favorite pizza place in Santa Rosa wear T-shirts that say, “Support Local Produce.” The menu repeats that slogan; it also appears in big letters on a wall for one…

Go, Cavs

The Warriors' great Klay Thompson pumped as if to shoot. Trevor Ariza (6' 7", 225 lbs) leaped to block the shot, but Thompson stayed bent down instead of rising up and Ariza's left knee clipped…

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