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Posts published in “Essays”

All the Populism Money Can Buy

Across the country, weekend before last there were anti-war demonstrations, modest in turnout, but hopefully a warning to Obama that war without end or reason in Afghanistan, plus 40,000 more troops to Kabul, is not…

In the Land of the Surfer Brah’

The past few years haven't been kind to Mexico's image. The unceasing hum of violence and corruption—of beach and border town shootouts, of high profile kidnappings and murders and bribes—would have been enough to squelch…

Be Not Afraid

Well everyone, it’s still harvest time and now we’re getting into the hardy winter warming vegetables. If you come to the Boonville Farmers Market Saturday mornings from 9:45 to noon at the Boonville Hotel Parking lot you can purchase some of those delectable vegetables, not to mention fall fruits and so much more. Cindy Wilder will bring her sweet, crispy Asian pears, Petit Teton is once again sharing their juju bees and seckle pears with us and if you’re unfamiliar with seckle pears you MUST try one. The sweet honey-like flavor is like no other pear. Of course, the apple press will be there for all of your leftover fruit after making pies and sauce and jam. Barbara Lewellen was there last week pressing her bounty to ferment into vinegar. (You go girl: resource, resource, resource.) If this is your first year in the Valley you should know it’s also time for Tom Brewer’s chestnuts. He brings buckets of them to the Market along with ones he’s roasted for you to taste. Mmmm!

The Case of Caster Semenya

The case of Caster Semenya has seen the admini­stration of athletics go about as badly wrong as it pos­sibly can. Semenya is the 18-year-old South African woman who won the 800-meter World Champion­ships in Berlin…

Highway Robbery In Comptche

Back in the days when the West was wilder, there was a way station on Orr Springs road three miles west of the junction of the Low Gap and Orr Springs roads. Called the Halfway…

White House v. Fox News: A War Obama Can Win

The jousting between the White House and Fox News is drawing grave warnings from pundits to Obama’s team that this is a losing issue for their man. They quote the old tag, “Never pick a…

Puta Caballo

About horses, I knew not much. The few I had rid­den back in the States were beaten down robots one finds in rental stables-the giddy-up-go plodders that get you from A to B and back…

Competitive Meditation

What a silly idea, competitive meditation. Yet in America all things become competitive and hierarchi­cal as reflections of the dominant operating system. Twenty years ago the notion of competitive yoga would have been just as…

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