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Posts published in “Essays”

How to Parlay PC Slogans into Government Millions

A built-to-kill pipe bomb exploded beneath the driver’s seat of Judi Bari’s car in the noon-hour traffic of downtown Oakland on Friday, May 24th 1990.…

New Age Narcissism

It won't come as news to most AVA readers, but as I was recently reminded, there's no narcissism like New Age narcissism. “New Age” ideas…

Garberville

I mentioned to a friend that I’d tried to get the Mateel Community Center to rent me space to present the Who Bombed Judi Bari…

War Stories: At the Front

Since we put the Veterans window in at Rossi Hardware’s display window on Armistice Day and, apparently because of the impact of the movie “Saving…

The Night of the Apocalypse

I set out from Haight Street for a night’s walkabout anticipating end-of-the-world spectacles. It was New Year’s Eve, end of an even thousand years if…

The Future Past

Let’s pause a moment before we head for the exits. I’m talking about the spectacular, the ludicrous, the humiliating and uproarious discomfiture of the Y2K…

Goodbye to All That

Somewhere around mid-November the Y2K whimpering died down out of sheer exhaustion. Humboldt county is calm. A couple of weeks ago I asked the amiable…

Butterfly’s Descent

The Butterfly has landed with a thud heard round the Northwest. On Saturday December 18, Julia Hill, aka Butterfly, descended from her aerie in a…

Seattle Diary

Seattle has always struck me as a suspiciously clean city, manifesting a tidiness that verges on the compulsive. It is the Singapore of the United States: spit-polished, glossy, and eerily beautiful. Indeed, there is, perhaps, no more scenic setting for a city set next to Elliot Bay on Puget Sound, with the serrated tips of the Olympic Mountains on the western skyline and hulking over it all the cool blue hump of Mt. Rainier.

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