Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Essays”

Open Letter to John Coate

Dear John Coate, KZYX GM I wrote your colleague, news director Paul Hansen, a lengthy email on Dec 1 about the Mendocino Medical Marijuana Board’s concern that John Sakowicz not become KZYX's official news reporter…

Turkey Vulture

Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comfortably I shall begin. So how was your Christmas? Did the new sweater fit? Did it still fit after dinner? Did you keep the receipt for your…

Adult Behavior

This New Year’s resolution business is for the birds. What we should have is New Week’s resolutions. That way we could acknowledge our failures and come up with something more realistic every few days. Or,…

Farm To Farm

On Tuesday we had some business involving transporting a young bull to service a couple of Jersey half-breeds at the Frey ranch in Redwood Valley. The bull calf is the third son of my favorite…

Disappointments In Samarra

Hazlitt got gloomily drunk for a fortnight after the battle of Waterloo, accurately anticipating that decades of reaction lay ahead, now that Boney had been definitely put away, with the Holy Alliance in the saddle…

Weed: the Elephant in the DA’s Office

Former prosecutor David Eyster is jumping into the race for Mendocino County District Attorney, setting the stage for a robust debate over the county’s current zigzag approach to prosecution of marijuana and other criminal cases.…

Great Moments In Public Deliberation

The following is a verbatim transcript of an exchange between County Supervisor John McCowen and Mendocino County Assessor-Clerk Recorder Susan Ranochak at the Board of Supervisors Meeting, December 15, 2009. The topic was a series…

Off the Record 12/30/2009

BACK ON MONDAY the 14th of December, the Board of Supervisors, as expected, voted 5-0 to allow a quarry operation on Poonkinney Road, an area lying between Highway 101 and Covelo, a very rural area…

An Interview with Bryan Pearn

In 2008, 15-year-old Bryan Pearn won high honors at the California State Science Fair with a project that examined how widespread water thievery had damaged a creek near his house in Willits, California

-