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Posts published in “Essays”

Not Even a Peanut

 A friend down the coast here in California called Wednesday to say that her mother, 95, had fallen, cracked her ribs, got a cough and told her daughters, “That’s it. I’m checking out.” She’s given…

Off the Record 12/16/2009

DR. RICHARD MILLER, MA, PhD and New Age audio avatar, may also be a literal carpet bagger. The doc seems to have bagged a valuable carpet belonging not to him but to the Mendocino Art…

Mendo’s Polanksi?

I just finished Jeffrey Toobin's excellent—if totally disturbing—Clint Smith, the Willits high school teacher who carried on a nearly year-long extramarital affair with his 15-year-old student. To be sure, the cases are different in fundamental…

Now the real fight begins…

  Include me among the Mendocino County folks who thought that a decisive election outcome last month had put on hold, at least for awhile anyway, the battle over big box retail development in the…

Mendo’s Management Deficit

Reader Michael Laybourn of Hopland recently asked: “Given the state of the county budget, what would you suggest to fix it other than layoffs of safety personnel?” First, the County should eliminate all management bargaining…

War Cries From a Defeated Man

Ritual trumphalism about America’s righteous mission in the closing sentences of his speech did not dispel the distinct impression during President Obama’s 33-minute address to cadets at West Point Tuesday night that we were listening…

Tim Lincecum’s Pot Bust: Stigma Strikes Out

Only in the San Francisco Bay Area did the story cross over from the sports pages to the news pages: on October 30, Tim Lincecum, the Giants' ace right hander, was stopped by a Washington…

McSweeny’s Eulogy for Newspapers

A curious invention hit the streets of SF yesterday: The San Francisco Panorama, a one-day only, 320-page, $5-on-the-street broadsheet, created by the folks at McSweeny's. That's 112 pages of news, sports, food and comics; 96…

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