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Posts published in “Essays”

Millionaire Publisher Declares He’s Broke (1974)

On the night before the Thanksgiving of 1964 I was comfortably seated in the neo-Edwardian lobby of the Algonquin Hotel in New York City having a drink with Ramparts Magazine publisher Edward Keating. The occasion…

Death By Bureaucracy

Mendocino County’s marijuana industry was started by curious hippies, all with a tinge of the outlaw, and grew and flourished through the years despite the real possibility of arrest, imprisonment, ripoffs, crop failures and more. …

Ancient Totems

For thousands of years, Mendocino County history was memorialized in spirit rocks like the giant granite message board at the headwaters of Feliz Creek, and another near Cloverdale on the Russian River. All are federally…

Snow Days

There is a learning curve with snow. I discovered this fact recently when I awakened in my Philo cabin up on the ridge to a sparkling white winter wonderland dusted with snow. I got up…

No Power

This is a pause from real life which includes the following things I’m cut off from on Day Three Snow Event: Music, internet, and TV.  It’s quiet without the music which usually plays most of…

Exploring Back Roads Around Harney County

The 1967 song by the WHO “I Can See for Miles and Miles…” could have been the theme for a recent 1,500 mile jaunt through Harney County in south central Oregon. If you live in…

Pot-Head Nation: A Truckful Of Turnips

Recently I came across an article on the long-term effects of marijuana use and as any and all of us would predict, the academic paper was not illustrated with a yellow smiley Happy Face. People…

Dumpster Diving with Burt Bacharach

About ten years old, my best friend Scott and I have big plans. We awake long before dawn in our little Southern California beach town of Corona Del Mar, the “Crown of the Sea” indeed,…

One Percenters’ Dirty Laundry

King Lear laments that “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” He’s referring to his daughter Goneril in the first act of King Lear, one of Shakespeare’s best known…

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