In Boonville, real wilderness can often begin a few feet from the pavement, as it does throughout the Anderson Valley and much of Mendocino County. I would hike due west from my house, down into…
Posts published in “Essays”
The fact is inescapable; the news media landscape has changed in the 21st century. On television, cable news channels have expanded exponentially and broadcast news channels have expanded the hours devoted to news. On radio,…
I am now officially poor, having gone full cycle: from dirty hippie living on food stamps, $42 a month fifty years ago, to landed gentry pocketing $273 a month today. Being a scammer most of…
To write her most recent novel, (2022; 549 pages; $32.50; Harper Collins) her tenth in the past 35 years, Barbara Kingsolver turned for inspiration to Charles Dickens whom she calls her “genius friend.” In the…
Forgive the pun, but the irrefutable American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh dropped a bomb in Washington's lap with his February 8th meticulous exposé "How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline." This was something that…
“I was born in Caddo Gap, Arkansas, on February 7, 1911, ain’t a third as big as Philo is now. I was the oldest in a family of eight sisters and a brother, the brother…
Two recent comments, published in opposition to the planned new courthouse, suggest security measures are overrated as there’s no history of breaches or escape attempts within anyone’s memory. Ahem. I have a memory, and it…
The lyricist and composer Sammy Cahn once quipped that Burt Bacharach “was the only songwriter who didn’t look like a dentist.” Many, indeed millions, were similarly bewitched by the looks of this greatest song-master of…
The Temporary Inmate “Charles Pernasilice, Haunted by the Violence at Attica, Dies at 70,” said the hed above a photo of a lanky, handsome young man standing outside a municipal building with his right fist in…