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Posts published in “Essays”

A Bloody Day in San Francisco

San Franciscans are observing the 75th anniversary of “Bloody Thursday” this year — that day in July of 1934 when open warfare raged on the city’s waterfront, a key day in the struggle of workers…

What It’s Like to Die

I died in April, 1979, a Saturday morning that I seem, now, to remember as being sunny and animated, as most sunny spring days on the Mendocino coast are, with that naive optimism unique to…

The Biden & Clinton Mutinies

Time bombs tossed seemingly casually in the past month by his vice president and his secretary of state disclose president Obama, in the dawn of his first term, already the target of carefully meditated onslaughts…

Tempers Flare, Priorities Flee

On July 14 the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors came back from a wholly unearned three week vacation to take care of such crucial business as whether or not the Ukiah Valley Sanitation District could…

‘A Damned Murder, Inc.’

Some time in early or mid-1949 a CIA officer named Bill (his surname is blacked out in the file, which was surfaced by John Kelly in the early 1990s) asked an outside contractor for input…

The Blue Green Water People

The Havasupai or People of the Blue Green Water live 3,000 feet below red and white earth at the base of the Havasu-wa Cataract Canyon in Arizona. The village is accessible only by helicopter and…

Fort Bragg Advocate-News: Not NewsHour

In its July 9 issue, the Fort Bragg Advocate-News ran an editorial that bravely confirmed what any thinking person already knew: Our local advertorial broadsheet—which is no more a newspaper than Bill O'Reilly is a…

Easing the Easement

Just behind the Zina Hyde Cunningham Tasting Room here in downtown Boonville, a brief road ran straight as a string east toward Anderson Creek. The road ran. Past tense. Farrer Lane, as it's called now,…

Fort Bragg Advocate: Not the Newshour

In its July 9 issue, the Fort Bragg Advocate ran an editorial that bravely confirmed what any thinking person already knew: Our local advertorial broadsheet — which is no more a newspaper than Bill O'Reilly…

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