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Posts published in “Essays”

Abandoning Reason

Last week The California Report aired a special program on the decision to close 70 California State Parks, including 8 in Mendocino County. Among the jewels of California’s State Park system are Hendy Woods, Jug…

The Manure Chronicles, Part I

Sandy calls to say she’s gotten permission to harvest rabbit manure from her friend’s rabbit barn. So I load my wheelbarrow and a big shovel into my little old pickup and head for Fort Bragg. A sunny spring morning, the angry winds of the past few days in abeyance, I roll along the Comptche-Ukiah Road at forty miles per and try to remember if over the decades of gathering manure for my various gardens, I have ever scored more than a baggy of rabbit manure. Horse, mule, cow, sheep, goat, chicken…but never a truckload of rabbit poop, until today.

Arline Day, A Personal Memory

Arline Day-Chambers passed away Saturday in Ashland, Oregon. She was 94. “Nana,” as she was always known among her family, was a fourth generation Californian born to Lovell and Helen Hunter Hamilton and raised on…

Marijuana Initiatives Max Out

With 3 legalization initiatives and 1 medical marijuana regulation initiative all aiming for the same 2012 ballot and competing for the same scarce funds, none of them have been able to raise the $2 million…

The Cash Behind the Bypass

We recently ran a letter by Willits citizens Donna Kerr and Bob Whitney, representing “Mendocino County Citizens For Responsible Transportation,” describing how misallocated transportation funds are being used for the Willits Bypass for “political” reasons…

Sunspots & Republicans

Suddenly the right has gone truly crazy. It must be sunspots. We’re three years into sunspot cycle number 24 and it crests in activity with 59 sunspots in early 2013, the weakest sunspot cycle in…

A Meth Maker’s Tale

I'd like to explain to you how I began to cook methamphetamine at the young and very impressionable age of 17. It was all unintentional, you see, and from the very beginning it's not what I set myself up to do.

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